Undead Demons?
by Ihsan997
Summary: When I started, they told me my method was WRONG. They told me it couldn't be done. But I knew science was on my side...and it was only a matter of time until the two paradigms would align. 7 chapters total
1. A Simple Question

**A/N: this story takes place some time after the Seige of Orgrimmar but before the opening of alternate Draenor.**

 **I don't own Warcraft, the locations involved or Sylvanas.**

"I hope there will be blood."

Fredreich Bunsenburger kept one hand folded behind his back as he shook his wine glass in the other, enjoying the faint sound of the ice cubes dinging against the rim. The quiet of the Brill city watchtower was a safe haven from the bustle of the streets below, like a fortress of solitude in the heavy traffic of central Tirisfal Glades. He could have spent more time jingling those ice cubes, listening and grinning like a child and simply enjoying the fact that his digestive system was one of the few functions he'd retained even in his undeath. Unfortunately, he was hosting the most auspicious of guests that night; a true victory celebration was premature.

"What was that, doctor?"

Watching his own grim smile in the raindrop covered window on the top floor for only a second longer, he turned around slowly, always moderating his movements in the presence of the Dark Lady out of respect. The fact that she hadn't simply invaded his thoughts to learn what he'd said implied a great deal of trust she'd placed in his abilities. It was a trust that was much easier lost than earned, and he took the risk of sipping on his wine to loosen up instead of answering immediately.

"Nothing, Queen Windrunner," he replied as he strode over to her position in the center of the mayor's office. Said office had been vacated save the queen's two skeleton knight bodyguards - provided as a gift by Bunsenburger's own operation - and Bunsenburger's own Orcish assistant. The space added to the informal sense of the setting, and reminded him that the audience he'd been granted was out of the ordinary - he had limited time to make his case.

"I know your time is limited, my liege; I can't express my gratitude for this meeting enough. I promise that once you see the results of our work, you won't be disappointed."

Whether the Dark Lady had been jaded by undeath or was simply weary of the sort of charlatans always ready to befriend world leaders, she didn't seem interested in even the most basic of pleasantries. "You have half an hour to explain, doctor. The grant you were given was a generous one...it's time to see results."

Preparation pays; in front of a leader unlike those known to the living, Bunsenburger should have felt quite nervous. A slight smile in an attempt to appear humble, however, spoke volumes of the man's confidence in his work. "Of course, my liege. Zulgha?" Unused to wearing a suit rather than his lab coat, he tried to stretch his arm out dramatically toward his assistant only to find his movement restricted, and he settled for nodding toward her instead.

Upon his call, the berobed young woman standing behind him - a living orc who'd picked her loyalties long ago - set to work opening a diorama on the mayor's desk. Unlike Bunsenburger, Zulgha's actions were slightly rushed due to nervousness. The curse of youth, the good doctor thought to himself as the Orcish acolyte spread the diorama panes open to give the Dark Lady a full view of the photographs, lab reports and line graphs of results.

No stranger toward the fields which he assigned to her subjects, Sylvanas stepped forward to take a closer look. The armored skeletons which Bunsenburger had helped to raise ironically motioned for him to step aside as they escorted the Banshee Queen even to take a few steps forward. Standing next to his assistant as he waited, Bunsenburger noticed Zulgha nervously tapping her foot in the floor. He raised a hand in a signal for her to stop, knowing that his results would provide all the support they needed in front of the leader of the entire Forsaken.

Sylvanas spent a great deal of time examining the written results, even running her finger beneath a few lines to reread several sections. The queen regent normally known for her alert shrewdness became temporarily engrossed in the material, shifting from only a cursory glance at the bottom line to a thorough read of the details. Bunsenburger allowed a smug grin to creep onto his dead face before sipping more of the wine, all the while steadying his hands; the clinking of ice cubes might break his queen's concentration, and he wanted her to review _everything_ before she began asking questions.

Zulgha nearly jumped in fright when Sylvanas began talking to herself the way Bunsenburger had done.

"The remainder...here...what? That...no...no, how?"

If there's one thing that even her enemies conceded about her, it's that Sylvanas Windrunner was never taken by surprise. She'd lost a tiny handful of battles, she'd been injured previously, she'd discovered plots only after they'd been hatched, but she was not a leader who faced down the unknown at a loss for explanation or even reaction. The fact that she furrowed her long eyebrows in disbelief pleased Bunsenburger to no end; he may very well have been the first person to disprove an expectation of failure from the Dark Lady. Attempting to remember a single time when she'd been wrong in her doubts threatened to inflate his ego a little too much, and he drank down nearly half his glass to relax.

In an almost comical movement, her skeletal bodyguards swiveled on an imaginary pivot as she turned to face Bunsenburger, always rotating such that they were at either side of their charge. "You are not one to fabricate results, doctor," she said, her voice tempered with the caution of a skeptic confused by confirmatory evidence.

"And you are not one to be fooled either way, my queen."

After scrutinizing him with a piercing gaze for a few more seconds, Sylvanas turned her head halfway to her bodyguards. "I want to lean," she stated tersely, politeness never necessary for the hollow undead.

In a flash, both skeletal knights grabbed the mayor's desk and moved it behind her, kicking a few smaller tables and stacks of documents out of the way. Leaning against the rim of the desk comfortably, Sylvanas folded her arms over her cloak, which she'd buttoned up for the sake of privacy; the queen regent of the Forsaken rarely entered the provinces during peacetime, and too much recognition could lead to delays. For a good half a minute, the Banshee a Queen appeared to mull the proposition over on her own, leaving Zulgha to fidget and worry next to Bunsenburger.

For his part, the good doctor only felt an upswell of excitement as he tried to imagine what sort of questions his monarch would ask. The numbers were solid, as was the photographic evidence. As well as...a live demonstration. The sort that he knew she'd appreciate quite a bit, once she saw it with her own eyes.

But...there would be time for that in approximately twenty seven minutes. Until then, he was sure that he'd have plenty to answer for.

Ignoring Zulgha's gasp for air, Sylvanas looked up, her arms still folded like a skeptical defense mechanism. "Start from the beginning. _After_ our first meeting. I need to know the narrative in between the numbers I see...just to confirm if this is what I think it is.

"If you're not misinterpreting the results...then I think you might have provided our deathguards exactly the troop surge we'll need."

Satisfied that the proverbial ball had been tossed to his metaphorical court, Bunsenburger no longer restrained his smile. Letting his ice cubes jungle with flagrant disregard, he basked in the glow of the spotlight he'd been given for just a few deserved seconds before bowing his head deferently.

"It will be my pleasure, Queen Windrunner. Let me tell the tale step by step...so that it may be clearer how the Forsaken can now replicate undead demons."


	2. A Modest Proposal

"I'm telling you, Bunsenburger, it's not possible!"

Zanien banged the blunt end of his wand on the conference table as if to punctuate his exasperation as the topic. The act nearly shook the coffin-shaped table and echoed throughout the chambers of the reserved room in the Mage Quarter, shocking the other members with the impropriety of it all. Though his fel green eyes flickered at Bunsenburger ever so spitefully, the slight wasn't likely to be noticed by anyone else, leaving the good doctor unable to call the seething Sindorei out on it. Zanien's colleague from Silvermoon, a much less acrimonious individual known as Talionia, deftly moved to diffuse ehat had degenerated into a cross debate.

"Slogans aren't going to help settle a proposal submitted to this ad hoc committee," the older, less fiery blood elf stated in as calm a voice as she could muster. "We know the various positions held; we still have yet to take action on Dr. Bunsenburger's proposal."

Martha, the most sympathetic member of the committee toward Bunsenburger's case, tried to move the discussion along as well, but to no avail.

"I don't think this necessarily needs to boil down into a vote, either; in theory, each member is free to decide whether or not they wish to contribute-"

"How are we even entertaining this?" Zanien said in a rapid tone, offending Martha into silence. "Every one of us works under the same budget constraints as the other class trainers. In Silvermoon, we're up to our necks in noobs accidentally setting themselves on felfire and I know ny colleagues here in Undercity are working under similar pressure. And now we have this layman-"

"Zanien, please," Talionia said a little more firmly.

Defiance took on the shade of fel as the morally outraged warlock continued. "No, it needs to be said! How is a room of professional demonologists taking seriously the request of a man of science, and one who never even audited the mage's core program at that!"

Zanien's negative appeal was accompanied with a jabbed finger in the direction of Bunsenburger, who remained silent in his seat at the far end of the table. Folding his hands on the table in front of him, the good doctor exploited his body's lessened physical sensations to pose like a statue, refusing to grant Zanien the reaction he wanted. Bunsenburger was confident to a fault, but he knew when he was in enemy territory: he was essentially asking the most important warlock educators on the continent to ignore one of their own in favor of an outsider.

When Bunsenburger's inside man noticed his lack of defense, he stirred, as the good doctor had expected. Never show up to a gun fight without a posse, as they both often said.

"If I may speak a word in defense of Dr. Bunsenburger," said Gunther Arcanus, the only necromancer in Tirisfal not directly under his employ, "he is not proposing his research based solely on appealing to himself. His operation includes one of my fellow necromancers, as well as acolytes both living and undead, and a val'kyr-"

" _Lesser_ val'kyr," added Zanien in a petulant tone of voice.

"-assisting him. His track record is proven, and he has contracts with numerous local Forsaken authorities. Were it not for his operation's fusion of magic and science, New Southshore wouldn't have been revived as a Forsaken port."

Unable to bask in the praise for even a moment, Bunsenburger found himself increasingly irritated at the intense scrutiny from a single member of the committee. "Excuse me my dear Gunther, but that's a proven track record with your field; not ours." As if he couldn't speak without using his hands, Zanien tapped the warlock class insignia on the sash he'd taken to wearing around his shoulder. "Had Dr. Bunsenburger requested funding from the Royal Apothecary Society, I would have supported the idea wholeheartedly."

His fellow blood elf even appeared tired of his grandstanding, and Talionia sighed deeply without even attempting to conceal her own exasperation. "Whether the request is a fair one or not, it was submitted to the correct committee; this idea has nothing to do with the Apothecarium. Now," the main representative of the Sindorei said sharply with a wave of her hand in the air to silence her fellow countryman, "let's move on to the substantive portion of this meeting. Forty five minutes was far too long to spend on the abstract alone. Can we move on to the prepared questions?"

For a good few seconds, Zanien stared in Talionia's direction as if attempting to communicate a silent message. When she shut him down and continued looking at their other colleagues, he found himself without support in a room full of the undead and relented.

"Fine."

As if tired of the whole ordeal, one of the local warlock trainers cleared his dry throat and adjusted his reading glasses to examine an index card.

"Dr. Bunsenburger, Richard Kerwin of Undercity. Nice to meet you. Now...ah..." Straining his eyes, Kerwin's wrinkled features became even more prominent in the candlelight. Unlike many of their kind, his skin had remained mostly intact in undeath, but the tradeoff was that all the signs of his advanced age in life remained preserved forever. "What...is...lemons...oh wait, I remember," he chuckled while tossing his index card to the side along with Zanien's attention span. "Now, you wish to raise undead demons. But as we all know, demons return to the Twisting Nether upon death. How do you intend to retain a corpse long enough for it to be raised?"

All the ad hoc committee's members save the recalcitrant sitting directly across from Bunsenburger turned their eyes to the heretofore silent man of science, his lab coat exchanged for a Forsaken tabard that never seemed to lay evenly on his two shoulders. Working the pause like a professional stage actor, he unfurled his packet of field photography and began sliding it over toward Kerwin - and only Kerwin, forcing the other members to all rely on the asker of the question.

"I thank you for the relevant question, professor," Dr. Bunsenburger replied, earning a delighted grin from Kerwin and an openly unprofessional head shake from Zanien. "The answer is apexis crystals. Preliminary tests on the samples from pre-war Draenor indicate that apexis tuning columns are the only means of permanently killing demons - their bodies disintegrate forever without the ability to rematerialize in the Twisting Nether."

"Which means that they-"

"Zanien, quiet," Kerwin said in a voice that was almost brusque for the old man. His eyes were fixated on the photographs in front of him, and a few other members of the committee were switching between trying to sneak a peek and focus on Bunsenburger's answer.

A smug, victorious smirk pulled at the corner of Bunsenburger's lips, though he kept himself under control for the sake of appearances. "As I was saying, demons killed under lab conditions within apexis tuning columns disintegrate forever when the right frequency is tuned and either, A, their bodies are already so damaged that the wavelengths finish the job, or B, their bodies aren't damaged but we simply blast them with enough waves. There is, of course the unmentioned issue of losing the corpses when they rematerialize in the Nether, which nobody mentioned until now." Not even bothering to look up at Zanien silently motioning toward him as if to say 'is anybody else listening to this,' Bunsenburger pulled out a sheet of fel vital readings and strategically passed them on to Talionia and nobody else. "But I do believe we discovered something last month."

A few other committee members tried to steal glances at the sheets in Talionia's hands, almost jealous at what she'd been given. The way her green eyes widened at the numbers only increased the curiosity of those who couldn't see it. "Five witnesses...all of them sentient?" she asked almost rhetorically, and the lack of context to her question caused everyone to look back to the good doctor.

"Every last witness is prepared to stand before the committee if you'd like to hear their testimony personally; we were able to sustain a felhunter's corpse here on our mortal plane for nearly three minutes after death."

Murmurs erupted among the members, and a pandemonium of pencil necked scholars soon followed. In his excitement to spy on the sheets in Talionia's hands, Kerwin accidentally allowed the photographs to spill from the envelope he'd been holding. Bunsenburger couldn't have asked for better had he planned it himself: the photos were spread haphazardly all across the conference table, allowing the committee members to view some of the photos but not all of them at once, and at bad angles. They practically became sensationalized, every one of them holding a piece of the puzzle but unable to solve it without Bunsenburger's assistance. Talionia began flipping through the sheets of felhunter vital signs more quicky than was possible for her to skim it, as if her skepticism had been turned on its head when everything added up.

Every the haughty rat sphincter, Zanien began furiously pointing at various parts of the photographs. "This is poppycock...how can you know for sure that these vital signs signify death when we don't have any other cases of dead yet preserved demons to measure against? You'd need a minimum of three repeated results to establish a scientific consensus, yet as far as I'm concerned, you don't have any proof that the felhunter in these pictures wasn't simply under stun effects from extensive damage." Zanien's eyes lit up an even brighter shade of green, as if the fel light bulb was shining in his mind. "The simplest explanation is usually the most correct one: you knocked this felhunter out cold after beating it into submission; you measured its vital signs while it was unconscious, a condition under which it remained until it finally died of system shock. I've seen this in demons previously. They're resilient creatures, but they can still be pounded into pulp like murlocs."

Had Bunsenburger a heart remaining in his chest, it would have begun to thump with irritation at that moment. Sufficed by gritting his molar teeth but steeling his lips into a congenial smile, he forced himself to face the immaturity from an otherwise respectable scholar valiantly. "I'm aware of that, warlock Zanien; that's why I'm requesting assistance to run more tests of the hypothesis and attempt to reproduce the results. You did read the text of my proposal prior to attending the meeting...correct?"

"Don't patronize me, Bunsenburger! I read the text and I'm aware that you're requesting we provide you with a candidate willing to permanently sacrifice their ability to summon a specific species of minion!"

Over the following moments, the forced smile gradually faded from the good doctor's face as a disappointing realization dawned upon him. One by one, the members of the committee began to peel themselves away from the visual aids he'd handed out, returning their attention either to him or to Zanien. Eyes blinked and heads shook as a number of them appeared rather surprised at the plainly obvious fact. And then the truth hit Bunsenburger hard:

Zanien _had_ read the entire proposal. The other members - the ones whose support he'd been counting on - had not.

"Well now, eh...let me see here," Kerwin stammered while adjusting his reading glasses again. Each member had their own hand written copy of the proposal, and they were likely examining the fine print for the first time, much to Bunsenburger's dismay. "Why, yes...of, I must have forgotten. The demons involved in the experiment will extinguish the blood pact of the volunteer warlock. Such that...laid warlock?"

"Oh just let me read it, grandpa!" Zanien huffed while pulling his own proposal out, ignoring the acrimonious expression from Talionia as he did so. " _Said_ warlock would never again be able to summon beholders if, for example, they offered their beholder for this experiment; the inability would be permanent, end quote. Ergo, what we're being asked here is to permanently stunt our pupils - for that is most likely whom we'll draw volunteers from - all so a non-warlock, by the Light a complete _non-magic user_ can run through a theoretically endless number of attempts trying to replicate a sort of stasis trapped, beaten, halfway dead state upon beings that, to the best of our knowledge, simply don't leave corpses behind!"

When Gunther raised his hand to speak, Bunsenburger knew he'd already lost. A deep, bitter hate built up in his throat, threatening to pour forth as his ally admitted defeat by acknowledging that their position requires a defense in the first place.

"Now let's slow down for a second. What we could potentially be looking at is one of the most significant developments in our history. If we can turn demons from their fiery life into an unholy undeath, we'd not only decimate the ranks of the Burning Legion but also add a huge upswell to the ranks of the Forsaken - an important ally of both the Sindorei and the Horde. This isn't only about us, but about Azeroth as a whole."

"Time, Talionia," murmured Luther Pickman, another local undead warlock whose only clear position was that the committee reach a decision in time for him to observe the bat races at the new Tirisfal track that evening.

Pressing her fingers against her temples, the previously moderate blood elf appeared to be feeling the pressure from the combined arguing of Zanien and Gunther as well as the impatience of her fellow committee members. When she opened her eyes, she took a deep breath and smiled as if to reassure everyone that they would reach an amicable solution. That did little to soothe Bunsenburger's anger, however; he already knew when he was beaten.

"Alright...alright. Look...I don't prefer this method, but if we hold a fair and anonymous vote, can we consider the issue settled? Majority rules?"

"Fine."

"Sounds fair."

"Alright."

"I think we've heard enough."

"Let's do this."

Disappointment at her own suggestion mixted into Talionia's features, along with a measure of exhaustion and an almost contrite glance in Bunsenburger's direction. For his part, the good doctor merely stared at the desk in front of his folded hands, in absolute shock that he'd misread the committee members so severely. Of all the contingencies he'd planned for, their shirking of their duties was not one of them, nor was the notion that Zanien would take his proposal seriously enough to actually formulate rebuttals. Realizing that he'd brought a knife to a gun fight, Bunsenburger allowed his anger to seethe deep down, pushing it into a private place to fester so he could at least preserve his dignity in front of his peers.

One by one, the truant committee members passed little slips of folded paper to Talionia, the chairwoman of the ad hoc committee on cooperation proposals from those outside the warlock community. Gunther, being a necromancer, had only been invited due to the lack of a separate guild for his class, and thus wasn't a voting member of the committee.

It mattered not, though; Bunsenburger already knew the result. And with each syllable that Talionia silently mouthed while tallying the votes, he could sense Zanien chuckling with a closed mouth, the blood elf's chest heaving slightly as a rather self-absorbed relaxation loosened up the man's posture. Every internal gut laugh was like salt tossed over the wound, grating on Bunsenburger's nerves even more as his perennial opponent refused to win magnanimously. As if to add his signature punctuation to his disgraceful victory, Zanien even turned toward Bunsenburger and smirked at him, holding the expression for the entire announcement even when the man of science refused to react.

Talionia continued to stare at the tallied votes for a moment, hesitating before she delivered the news. Only when everyone was leaning forward in anticipation did she lean back in her chair, shake her head and speak.

"Majority vote, by a tally of five to three, is...against accepting the proposal for partnership between Bunsenburger Labs and the Horde Warlocks' Guild of Lordaeron."

For a good few moments, Talionia continued staring at the votes, and most of the committee members followed suit. Only the flicker of the candles lighting the conference room could be heard, and the air hung heavy on everyone as even those who voted against the proposal ostensibly felt uncomfortable looking Bunsenburger in the eye.

His cold undead blood suddenly boiling - at the antagonism of Zanien, at the failure of his peers, of the tendency of single strong personalities to unfairly dominate meetings, at the simple lack of vision among those of lesser intellect - Bunsenburger had suffered enough insult for one day. Scooping his photographs and sheets up off the conference table and shoving them back into his briefcase, he turned and brusquely walked out of the conference room, his uncomfortable dress shoes echoing his footsteps off of the stone walls of the narrow corridor as he walked back toward the Mage Quarter proper. Not even one last childish taunt from Zanien was enough for him to turn back, his honor too besmirched to face the committee without saying things he'd regret later. His walk to the city bat handler was a swift one, peppered by thoughts of how he could rationalize his first clear cut, fair and square loss in his career.


	3. An Immodest Proposal

Bunsenburger's lab coat was his comfort zone; it was his element. And even when he was overworked and underslept - for his retention of a digestive system meant that his body did require a minuscule amount of sleep - living inside of that lab coat was his sanctuary. Every tool he needed had its own pocket, every button was fastened and every wrinkle had been ironed out. All was prepared and as it should be...a world apart from unreliable peers who approached the future of their people like a casual game of backgammon.

Necrotic magic flickered in front of him, casting dark light onto his scowl as much as it did the rows of fallen warriors waiting for their second chance. His entire windowless laboratory was illuminated from within, and not simply from the lanterns suspended from the stone ceiling. Energy crackled and popped, competing for his attention against a bitterness that had festered for weeks. Even when bone and metal snapped into place, he continued to stare blankly into the chaos of magic and undeath on the electrified minion assembly tables he'd built himself without pause. Teeth gritting and gloves squeezing, he just stood with his arms folded behind his back like a displeased military commander - an analogy not entirely far from the truth. Only the cessation of the process pried him out of his shell.

"That makes twenty three more skeleton knights since we started this morning."

Ever subtle but serous, Bunsenburger's direct colleague at the lab, Barghash, stepped back from the assembly table. One of the few living humans to have joined the Forsaken, the necromancer was a man of application whereas Bunsenburger was a man of theory. As to be expected, Barghash required more breaks after the effort of raising soldiers to order for their faction's various area commanders; mana depleted more quickly than ideas. Even without the light of his magic, Barghash was a man as striking as many of his undead compatriots; his coffee-colored skin contrasted with the ruby red and jet black of his robes, and he bore the sort of presence that could command both the living and the undead. A slight haze in his otherwise expressionless face, however, told of his manaburn after a morning of hard work.

Knowing that their understanding was a strictly professional one, Bunsenburger relented from his brooding to avoid stepping on the toes of his right hand man. "Yes, I suppose lunch would be in order then; shall we meet back at half past one, then?" he asked, a courtesy he extended to precious few people under his employ.

With a cordial nod that was the closest to personal informalities that the two of them ever came, Barghash saluted before donning the goat skull he used as a mask outdoors. "I'll see you then," the still living human replied to the undead human, is battlemage armor clinking beneath his robes with every step. Bunsenburger listened until the sound disappeared, enjoying the relative quiet for as long as he could. In a laboratory as busy as his, those moments of solace were few and far between - a great detriment to his mood after a certain mishap a few weeks prior.

Knowing that his other partner would be expecting instruction, Bunsenburger gave a sideways glance toward the sound of beating wings and regarded the lesser val'kyr assigned to his operation politely. A stunning combination of beauty, power and misplaced priorities, Runa was a flying contradiction and a reminder of the political constraints he had to deal with. Physically, she was an awesome specimen, with a musculature that would make an orc jealous but without the gross vascularity that would have left her skin appearing rough and masculine; in combat, she'd been bested by Alliance and Legion enemies frequently and lacked the prowess to match her intimidation. Professionally, she possessed great abilities that should have meshed well with Bunsenburger's science and Barghash's magic, but she'd been assigned to their laboratory without any training given to her beforehand, and Bunsenburger frequently found himself teaching her on the job. Politically, she appeared to be an outward sign of the Forsaken government's respect for his work, whereas in reality her placement had been non-consensual on everybody's part and primarily induced by jealousy and inadequacy on the part of the Royal Apothecary Society. Runa was strong, capable and cooperative but more often than not would wait around for instructions if she either hadn't already been given any or hadn't found any interesting discussions of Bunsenburger's to spy on.

Since most of her face was covered by that infernal eyeless helmet, he had no idea what she was thinking when she just continued to float and stare at him, and tried to find something to occupy her with while he sought a few moments of his own to brood and seethe over words left unsaid.

"Runa, while we're on break, could you go check that the gargoyles have been fed?"

For a few seconds, her wings beat a little faster as if she was pleased but didn't realize that she was so easy to read. "I have already taken care of that, doctor," she replied flatly, though the faint smile at the corner of her black lips implied that she'd been waiting for him to ask just so she could answer so quicky.

"Have the plague hounds been taken for a walk?"

"Yes...they already have," she replied with a tone that was sincerely flat and without passion. "Could I please not have to do that anymore? It seems like a poor utilization of my skills."

"Yes, well, the ghouls were on loan today and couldn't handle it themselves...wait, have you tallied the ghouls yet? We need an accurate head count to ensure that our customers didn't try to skim any off of the top."

At thet, the val'kyr openly frowned. "You promised I wouldn't have to do that any more; it's such a menial task. You never ask Zulgha or Barghash to do it."

Wiping his glove across his forehead in exasperation, Bunsenburger tried to find more reasons for her not to follow him around, especially anywhere near his files. The fact that her appeals for avoiding the gopher work he'd previously assigned her we're all logical, reasonable and respectable made finding more tasks to busy her with all the more difficult. The longer she lingered at the laboratory with nothing official to do, the greater the risk of her uncovering secret techniques for raising more effective minions at a higher rate and then passing them on to his rivals among the apothecaries, who were already more ingratiated to the authorities than he despite poorer results.

Just when Bunsenburger worried he'd have to play the bad guy again and assign her to bone collection or abomination stitching, the corridor outside of the assembly room was filled with the sound of a single note of a pipe organ.

"Ah! Yes! The bell," Bunsenburger sighed in relief. "Runa, could you check who it is while I straighten up in here?"

Though the val'kyr displayed no outward reaction, the way she sort of just floated in front of him for a few seconds signified her disappointment at yet another paltry task. "As you wish, doctor," she sighed right back at him. Her ghostly wings carried her down the exceptionally wide corridors of his compound's main laboratory building, though he waited and listened just to ensure that she really was flying toward the front door and not sneaking off to his archives.

Once he heard the double doors actually open into the courtyard, Bunsenburger tried to organize his workspace to the best of his ability. There were still a dozen of the most recently raised minions standing idly about, examining every nook and cranny and counting the number of stone tiles on the walls. The advantages of his method were quite clear: his skeletons were lighter than gnomes, stronger than draenei, tougher than orcs and still retained enough sentience to alter and adjust their orders as logically needed. Unfortunately, the only orders he'd given them until then was to get out of the way while he raised more of them to keep his mind off of replaying the ad hoc committee meeting in his head over and over again. They looked completely disorganized and kind of stupid when they were simply staring at the electrodes lining the control panel as if they were lava lamps.

"Attention, deathguards!" Bunsenburger called out, and immediately all twelve skeleton knights fell into line, clicking their metal boots together in unison. "We might have visitors, so everyone remain stiff and serious looking! You could be seeing your future employers here?"

A round of rattles answered him as the skeletons all nodded in affirmation, their teeth and jawbones clacking together as they did so. Almost immediately, the sound was followed by a single pair of light footsteps as well as a second ghostly hum aside from that of Runa.

When Bunsenburger turned around to receive his guests, he was struck with a mixture of pleasant surprise as well as bitter remembrance. Filing in behind the val'kyr were the demon trainer from the proposal meeting and a banshee whom he recognized as one of Undercity's mage trainers.

"Miss Martha Strain...this is certainly unexpected. And I believe this is Kaelystia Hatebringer at your side?"

Knowing that the skeletons were now alert enough to track her machinations, Runa settled against the wall of the assembly room and remained silent. For her part, Martha appeared content to shoot Bunsenburger a contrite expression as her companion exchanged pleasantries.

"That is, indeed, who I am," Kaelystia replied, courtsying since her incorporeal form didn't allow her to shake hands. "I'm a trainer predominantly in frost magic."

"So I've heard, so I've heard; we haven't met, but I believe we have mutual friends. Now...what is it that brings you here today?"

"I believe Martha can explain," the banshee replied with a haunting echo.

A good few seconds passed as Martha and Bunsenburger exchanged awkward glances. Though they weren't friends, they respected each other as equals and he'd come to count on her judgment previously. That she'd attended the meeting without fully reading the proposal he'd sent let him down more than the other committee members, most of whom he knew to proverbially have their heads in the clouds like most spell casters. Her hesitation to begin even after a few more pleasantries implied that she knew how he felt.

"Well...doctor, I wanted to revisit this idea which you floated a few weeks ago...the one about turning demons to be undead."

What few remaining fine hairs on the back of Bunsenburger's neck stood up on end at the same exact moment that Runa's wings began to beat even faster. Worried at the exposure of both his previous failure and what he hoped was a potential second chance, he allowed himself to react rather than act.

"Why, what a pleasant surprise! I'm quite glad you wish to discuss such theories, and non-concrete ideas. Come now, let me show you both to my office while Runa here observes our newest knights in the drill yard."

Bunsenburger had already begun to usher his two guests into the corridor by the time the lesser val'kyr realized what she'd heard. "Wait, what? But..." Runa stopped herself mid-sentence when Bunsenburger shot her a firm stare over his shoulder, unbeknownst to his two oblivious guests. She'd been assigned to her current position spying on Bunsenburger as punishment from her superiors after losing a duel to an Argent Crusade commander in the Plaguelands, and was aware that the greater val'kyr could always replace her if they felt their spy was causing too many complaints from the good doctor. As much as he was monitored, she was indentured. "Right away, doctor," she sighed in defeat.

Down the hall, Bunsenburger made sure to lock the door to his archives before leading his two guests into the office area. The clean and orderly nature of Barghash's workspace contrasted with the royal mess that was his own, and he had to clear a stack of papers off of one of his chairs in order for Martha to sit (Kaelystia just floated).

Bunsenburger sat behind his desk and leaned forward, dropping any pretense of feigning disinterest given the topic at hand. "I'm curious as to why this dead horse has been reanimated once more," he said, making no effort to mask the weariness in his voice. "The impression I was given is that the proposal was never under serious consideration by the committee that your colleagues formed."

Martha frowned as if offended by his directness. "Be easy on us, Freidrich; most of us assumed your idea would be a shoe-in for support and hadn't anticipated Zanien's contrary arguments. Had he been sick that day or otherwise incapacitated, we would have approved. Of that, I have no doubt."

"Without truly knowing what the proposal entailed?" he asked, his usual acidity absent from his voice in front of two he could actually trust. "Of what value is uninformed consent?"

Pursing her lips and staring at him a little harder, she seemed to be choosing her words carefully. "I'm here now, Freidrich. Maybe it's too late for the committee, but I came. Can you not appreciate that?"

"I can," he confessed after realizing that she wasn't being sarcastic.

"Thank you. So if I may, there's a matter of importance to both Kaelystia and I, and I believe it's of importance to you and your endeavor as well."

Bunsenburger glanced at the banshee, noticing the frost crystals she generated in her hands when idle. Try as he might, he simply couldn't understand how she fit in to the picture; there really wasn't any need for magi to be involved in a specialist's job. Not one for awkward pauses, Kaelystia proceeded to explain her role.

"For quite a long time, the Forsaken have been trying to gain a foothold in central Kalimdor; if we want to secure our homeland here in Lordaeron, we need to branch out not only in politics but in soft power influence. And...well, I enjoy the scenery there. Rolling plains are more fascinating to me than the same pine forests we all grew up with here. I think I'd be happy there, but hopping on a boat on my own would be foolish."

Without skipping a beat, Martha spoke in an equally animated fashion. "I must concur with miss Hatebringer here in regard to the environment," the demon trainer added. "I did pass through the Barrens once on a safari, when I was positioned temporarily in Thunder Bluff. That didn't work out due to a lack of demand for my skills in Mulgore, but the Barrens...the Barrens are quite different. Everything one would need is available there, especially jobs and lodging. I have this coffee table book of paintings by tauren artists, and..." Bunsenburger shot her a confused expression, and Martha slowed down and redirected her train of thought. "Well, anyway, both of us are thinking about relocating to the Barrens."

"And it's quite ironic; not only would both of us prefer a roommate, but my talents would also help Martha to remain: my frost magic could preserve her bodily tissue and prevent the heat and humidity from ageing her flesh during the daylight hours," Kaelystia said quickly, flashing her fangs as she grinned wide. "The two of us would be quite the power couple."

Much less forward than her companion, Martha began to look down coyly. Not wanting to force a sympathetic peer into an awkward moment, Bunsenburger pushed for the connection to him again. "So the Barrens may have space for a new mage and warlock trainer...do you...are you implying that we can lure unsuspecting noob warlocks to-"

"No, no, nothing like that," Martha said, deftly correcting his understanding and becoming animated again once the focus was off of her. "I'd never victimize a newbie of my own class; it's completely unethical. Members of the Alliance, on the other hand..."

His interest immediately piqued, Bunsenburger leaned forward in his chair so quickly that Kaelystia let out a little echoing laugh. "Well, we know how to get your attention, doctor!" she chortled.

"Go on..."

Leaning back casually in a stark contrast to Bunsenburger, Martha appeared rather pleased that he'd taken to her idea so quickly. "In Ratchet, these two warlock trainers...they operate out of a hut in the neighborhoods of the far northwest. The two of them currently handle all the training for anybody in the Barrens regardless of affiliation, and they have the market cornered. But you know my class, doctor...we operate outside of legal authority and tend to have about as much honor as rogues. I doubt either the Alliance or Horde know that they're there..." She paused when Bunsenburger glanced up at her in concern.

"One of them might be difficult," added Kaelystia. "She's getting to that part."

"Anyway, neither faction knows that these two are there, and I seriously doubt that Steamwheedle has any record of them...they're in this back alley in the northwest of Ratchet, the second level of the city wedged against the bluffs."

"You've done quite a bit of research on this, Professor Strain."

"That I have, doctor. I know their schedules, I know their habits...and I know that they're the typical bookworms as our kind tends to be, without social circles to miss them. So, if they happened to be...removed from the picture, so to speak...none would be the wiser."

Bunsenburger raised a finger, but Kaelystia was one step ahead of him. "But that still doesn't explain how you fit in to the picture, does it?" the banshee asked excitedly.

"I believe it does...you want me to have these two rival warlock trainers removed so the two of you can set up shop as warlock and mage trainer of Ratchet; the benefit for me comes as two demon summoners whom I can kidnap with near impunity and force to cooperate with the testing of my hypothesis," he said after a moment of deduction. Kaelystia looked a bit disappointed that he'd figured it out before she could tell him, but he knew she'd get over it. Martha was quick to take command of the conversation, her yellow eyes glowing in delight.

"Here's the complication, doctor; one of them is a gnome, a certain Babagaya Shadowcleft. Abducting her poses little risk for you."

"Naturally."

"But the other one is Matero Zeshuwal...he's Sindorei. A citizen of the Horde, however tenuously."

Not skipping a beat either, Bunsenburger couldn't prevent the grim smile from spreading across his grey lips. "Not any more tenuously than we are," he chuckled deep in his throat.

Both of his guests relaxed once they saw that Bunsenburger was on the same page as they were, and Martha had to pull them all back on topic after a round of jokes at the expense of the living. "So doctor, Kaelystia can handle the transportation; she can port all of us there and send you and your agents back. The two of us need to tender our resignations in Undercity, which will be simple enough since our colleagues can cover the needs of the noobs for us and the deathguards are tacitly in support of inserting Forsaken as far and wide as possible. Can you be ready to leave in two days?"

"If you mean me personally, then I won't be able to attend; the same deathguards have put in another order for my semi-hollow troops in the Badlands. They've performed phenomenally well against the Iron Horde, you know."

"So we've heard; I don't suppose you could send some of them along with us, then, to extract the two packages?" Kaelystia asked.

"Absolutely. Look, you don't need to worry about my contribution at all. I'm behind this plan one hundred percent; those which benefit all are the most auspicious. So I'm thinking...Barghash and I must remain here, and if both he and I get to work to cover the difference, I can send the full dozen skeleton knights that you saw in my work room. Keep half of them there in Ratchet as your personal security force, while the other half will return with said 'packages.' Think of it as a parting gift."

"Really, doctor, you're too kind," Martha cooed.

Kaelystia appeared a bit more apprehensive. "Will the skeletons be intelligent enough to follow orders?"

"The deathguards think so, but just in case I'll send my assistant Zulgha with you. She hasn't had the opportunity to participate in any battles since we secured the Alterac Mountains as official Forsaken territory, so I'm sure she'll jump at the chance."

Martha rubbed her hands together, her ambitions seeming to come to fruition. To see one of the few peers he could trust moving forward was one of the few sights that could warm Bunsenburger's old heart; the fact that he was also winning in the situation was icing on the cake.

Unfortunately, Kaelystia proved to be noiser than her companion.

"What about that strapping winged lass who answered the door? A flying ally is always an asset to have on quests that involve chasing down targets that must be kept alive."

Bunsenburger's eyes widened as he realized that neither of his guests truly understood the problems with Runa. He couldn't just come out an tell them that she was spying on him for the apothecaries or that she'd been caught snooping in his office. Of course, they'd advise him to report her to the greater val'kyr if he had problems with her, but he couldn't _prove_ anything, which would just make him appear to be vindictive and petty.

Unfortunately yet again, he didn't have time to consider the matter anymore before the eavesdropping lesser val'kyr made her presence known.

"I'd very much love to go," Runa stated flatly from the other side of the door.

"What the...Runa!" Bunsenburger shouted as he rose from his desk and strode across his office. "I told you not to listen in on my private conversations!"

He flung the wooden doors open, finding the massive Valkyrie floating back and bumping into the wall in surprise. For a second she tried to hold an innocent expression on the exposed lower half of her face, but quickly he saw the nervous frown she couldn't conceal and knew that she probably hadn't thought out her plan of action too much.

"Runa, need I remind you that I'll be reporting to the greater val'kyr for your quarterly evaluation soon-"

"Oh, I hadn't even considered this before!" Martha chirped in about as cheery a tone as her aged voice allowed. Sweeping right past Bunsenburger, she regarded the floating gothic warrior in awe. "I've heard of the work your kind does, miss...Runa, is it? I actually wouldn't mind a live demonstration."

"Martha, unfortunately Runa already has quite a few responsibilities here at the lab-"

Kaelystia mode next, literally floating through Bunsenburger's body in a rather disorienting, incorporeal manner. "Ten years with the Forsaken and I've never seen a specimen like this," the banshee said almost absentmindedly.

Flattered by the attention, Runa basked for a moment. "I can raise ghouls from the recently dead," she said in a low voice with a pleased grin that betrayed her feigned humility, entirely forgetting that her supervisor was glaring at her. "And I'd love to take a break from the lab for a while; this whole plan sounds fascinating."

"You listened to the whole..." After gritting his teeth for a moment, Bunsenburger stopped himself, both to save face in front of his peers and after a revelation. "You...would love...yes...yes! Runa, that's the perfect idea!"

Runa's jaw actually dropped open for a second. "Really?"

"Yes, I never considered it until now, but yes," Bunsenburger said nonchalantly at first. His face gradually darkened as fantasies of being able to perform work unobstructed for a whole flashed through his mind. "In fact, I think it's great that you get out of the lab for a while. Maybe take a good, long trip in the Barrens, too."

Partially distracted by the two guests enamored with her, Runa seemed to miss the subtle hints that Bunsenburger was dropping. "I won't let you down, doctor," she replied, only halfway paying attention to him.

Folding his arms behind his back again, Bunsenburger found himself a bit relaxed after having temporarily panicked at the thought of letting the val'kyr be involved. To be fair, he was getting what he wanted with very little difficulty, and had the support of mutually benefitting friends. The situation was turning out much better than he expected.


	4. The Heist

A mangy cat wandered down the winding, narrow streets of a small neighborhood in Ratchet that night. All the shops had been locked up in that quarter of the port city, and the stray took its time perusing all the bowls of various scraps that the locals had left out for it. The cat didn't have a home, but it was well fed and happy; as outstanding a member of the community as all the sentient denizens of the neighborhood.

In between the stucco and plaster buildings of the empty little street, a ball of energy materialized. Silent at first, the power soon grew until a flat, two-dimensional disk opened up into the air, swirling around with images of pine trees, tombstones and a continent across the ocean. The stray cat sat down and watched, mesmerized by the way the disc all swirled around the central point like the Maelstrom. It was a perfectly conjured portal...had it not been conjured at about the same level as the awnings over the second floor apartment balconies of the goblin port.

Dark figures approached from the other side of the disc, poking through with their metal boots and gauntlets without pretense as a dozen skeletal soldiers marched through. Entirely unaware of their inaccurate teleportation, they quicky dropped down to the street, landing almost as gracefully as the stray cat that they squashed beneath their silent steps.

"Well, this doesn't look so bad SHIT-"

Unaware and unprepared, a previously jovial orc donning black robes and flip flops walked through at fear them, immediately shrieking as she tumbled twenty feet toward the street below. Two of the skeletal warriors caught her and set her on the ground, though she was shaken enough to stumble once before regaining her balance.

Zulgha glanced back up at the portal. "That's completely inaccurate," she grumbled.

A larger figure emerged, partially blocking the light of the portal as it dissipated. The disappearance of the interfering light revealed Runa, her head tilted toward the sky pretentiously, as she carried Martha and Kaelystia in one hand each. Which looked a bit odd since both the val'kyr and the banshee were incorporeal ghosts but somehow it worked.

Martha brushed her dress off as Runa landed. "Well, that was almost like one of the rides at the Darkmoon Faire," she chuckled.

"I'm a frost specialist, not a portal specialist," Kaelystia chucked in return as she surveyed their surroundings. "Now, eh, let's see...ah yes, I believe the warlock coven is wedged against the bluffs in the very back of this neighborhood. Let's go."

Not wanting to spend any more time in such a warm climate than necessary, Zulgha followed behind their two guides quietly as they traversed the winding, disorganized streets of a less busy Ratchet neighborhood. Thankfully, the two class trainers were content to just chat with each other as they led the way, leaving the only sounds to be their two low voices, the clap of Zulgha's footwear and the surprisingly quiet marching of twelve fully armed undead soldiers.

And the zap of Runa resurrecting something behind them.

Knowing that the lesser val'kyr possessed the intelligence but lacked the good judgment of her kind's more advanced fellows, Zulgha closed her eyes for a second and tried to pretend that she hadn't heard anything and that Runa hadn't done something that would result in their being exposed.

"Please be the wind, please be the wind, please just be the wind-"

"Hey everybody, we have a new pet!" Runa beamed as she flew up toward their two guides.

"Awwww!" both Martha and Kaelystia cooed.

Opening her eyes, Zulgha was met with the street cat that the skeletons had landed on, raised like a ghoul complete with the jagged, jerky movements that signified a completely useless, hollow undead. "Mrrrooowwwrrr," it meowed in a warped, baritone voice that spoke of a stunning lack of even basic intelligence.

"You've got to be kidding me," Zulgha muttered under her breath as Runa proudly carried the brain dead creation in her arms like a pampered princess pet. She tried to tune out the ensuing conversation, falling back among the skeletons that Barghash had instructed to follow her every command and using them as a sort of bulwark against inanity.

Soon enough, both Martha and Kaelystia stopped in a rather narrow, unpaved alleyway, ducking into the tall Barrens grass that had sprouted up in the poorer section of the city. Just around the corner, Zulgha could sort of see the outline of a building constructed with fel architecture, thought Runa obliviously blocked the entire alleyway with her wings and obstructed the view.

"Well, that's unexpected," Martha whispered, her tone of voice laced with unpleasant surprise.

After failing to see around Runa's strategically obstructing frame, Zulgha relented. "What specifically is the problem?" she asked, hoping they could just get to the point.

Pausing for a few seconds, Martha just continued to stare at what appeared to be a warlock hut. "The lights are on in the central training room; we assumed that they would be asleep. We'll have to incapacitate them all the same, but I'm worried about them escaping and alerting the bruisers."

"I don't see any bruisers...or anybody else, for that matter," Kaelystia whispered back. After a moment of thought, she conceded to her companion's point. "Better safe than sorry, I suppose."

Pushing forward, Zulgha's heart raced at the thought of a good fight. "Alright, I got this. Martha, Kaelystia, you both might want to hang tight; once we have the packages secured, we'll call you in for a final sweep of your new home base to ensure that there aren't any traps or stragglers. And Runa, by the shadow, leave that atrocity here and stop flying because your wings create too much noise."

"His name is Mr. Happy," Runa replied in a voice that was a little too loud.

"Runa! Keep your voice down! Leave whatever its name is here and get walking!"

Without even waiting to see Runa's jaw drop open in sincere offense, Zulgha waved the skeletons forward. The area behind the alleyway was not only unpaved but also a bit of a mess; just the warlock hut hidden from view of the street, a few storage huts and an outdoor water pump next to an unused mount hitch. The skeletons proved surprisingly intelligent if in the sense of only following orders; they moved around a tumbleweed and a crumpled up newspaper in the ground so as to avoid making noise, and they even walked in a single file line away from the light of the window in a path that Zulgha herself hadn't realized was stealthier. Pulse racing, Zulgha listened for the sound of a man quietly singing in Thalassian inside the main hut, and her mind conjured images of death versus demonic magic clashing in green, red and black explosions. Everything seemed just fine until Runa, who'd been walking on the ground silently until that point, conjured her ghostly battle axe.

 _::SHOOOOON::_

"Shit, Runa!" Zulgha hissed in reaction to the ethereal sound caused by the weapon conjuration.

Looking back, she could see the burly beauty in a stance that looked threatening but was too loose to actual be an effective battle stance, as if she was posing for the cover of the Undercity serialized weekly. "Sorry," the lesser val'kyr said out loud.

"What the fu...Runa, shut up!"

"Why? Whoever is in there obviously heard the sound of my Munificent Warpiece of the Wailing Skies, so they already know we're here."

"Runa, I swear, stop talking!"

"That sentence doesn't make any sense."

"We don't accept trainees at this hour," came the voice of the blood elf man inside of the hut. "Please come back in the morning."

Both women paused for a moment, Zulgha ducking low and trying to peer through the window while Runa continued to stand like what must have appeared to be a giant winged lumberjack to whoever was inside. The sound of two feet creaked on the floorboards until the man reached the door, and Zulgha quickly took a casting stance in case she had to cripple him with one of her status ailments. The door flung open, casting light on visage of their first target.

"Listen can you just - why hello!" Matero, the demon trainer of Ratchet, paused mid sentence as he began practically leering at Zulgha and Runa both, as dumbstruck as if he was dreaming at first. Like a character straight out of a comedy at the Stormwind theater, Matero leaned against the door frame in a manner so cliche that Zulgha didn't even bother concealing her eye roll. "Anything you ladies need help with tonight?" he asked in a suggestive tone.

Having prepared for a fight, Zulgha tried to think of a great comeback before they rendered him unconscious. Runa, however, had other ideas.

"Vengeance!"

For a good few seconds, Matero appeared confused, though his expression slowly turned to one of intrigue. Zulgha turned around to see that the val'kyr hadn't even moved from the pose she'd struck, and was just standing there preening with her battle axe.

"Well?!" Zulgha asked after a few more seconds of Matero leering at them.

Shaking her head as if she'd been zoning out, Runa turned her helmeted head toward the orc. "Huh? Oh...I thought you were going to-"

"Damnit Runa, just use the flat side of your axe!"

"Say, didn't I see you two at the costume party last week - ACK!"

 _::THUNK::_

"Like this?" Runa asked as the incorporeal blade somehow banged against Matero's forehead like a solid striking a solid. The blood elf's eyes rolled back and he wavered for a moment before slumping against the door frame. The blow was a clean one, and Matero didn't even appear that hurt by the fall.

"Finally! Yes, like that, Runa," Zulgha sighed in relief. Relaxing her stance, she turned to a few of the skeletons. "Take him back to Kaelystia and have her freeze him into hibernation. We need him alive."

"Yesss..." hissed one of the skeletons with a voice that sounded like the wind. It lifted Matero over his shoulder and promptly left, the other two at either side of it. Zulgha watched them both walk back toward the alleyway just to ensure that they understood her instructions, and was pleased to find that the semi-sentient creations were probably the more competent of the minions that the laboratory produced.

"What's going on?" piped up the voice of a gnome from inside of the hut.

Turning around, Zulgha could see that a berobed figure stood atop a loft inside of the one-and-a-half story hut. The little gnome looked disoriented but not drowsy, as if she'd been reading for a very long time and had pulled away from the pages too quicky. Perfect.

"Good evening, miss Shadowcleft," Zulgha said with mock politeness as she invited herself inside of the hut. The place was disgustingly well organized, and exuded the sort of anal retentive nature of casters who spent too much time writing refutations in journals and not enough time getting out and wreaking havoc. "We've come to escort you on your trip!"

Despite her age and her profession, the middle aged gnome appeared scared in a way that just tickled Zulgha to no end. "But, but I wasn't planning on a trip!" Babagaya stammered.

Zulgha snapped her fingers. "Runa!" she called, and for once the lesser val'kyr actually accepted a direct order, walking on foot and ducking beneath the doorway in an obvious attempt to intimidate the tiny warlock.

"What is this? Who are you people?"

"We're-"

"We're your worst nightmare," Runa said before flipping her battle axe around in her hands. The line sounded cheesy but Zulgha had to at least give the ghost credit for trying.

Babagaya covered her mouth with her hands, eyes wide with almost too much fear considering her abilities. Zulgha clenched her fists, uneasy at how easy the abduction seemed. "Oh no, you're here to kidnap me, aren't you? That's just awful!"

Keeping her hands clamped over her mouth, Babagaya walked over to the top of the stairs. Runa shouldered her battle axe, reaching upward toward the loft with her free hand - she was almost tall enough to pull the gnome down - and grinning smugly. "You're coming with us, ma'am."

"Well, I guess I'd better surrender then!" Babagaya replied through her clamped fingers. Zulgha only noticed the faint dark glow in between them at the last second.

"Runa, don't!"

Throwing her hands apart, Babagaya sneered at the two much larger people, sending a stream of darkness toward the val'kyr. "Shadow bolt, sucka!" the gnome snarled as her spell smashed right into Runa's chestplate.

The blast hit the val'kyr so hard that she didn't even groan or flinch. Her large frame flew straight back and slammed into the wall, her limbs and wings flailing around like a rag doll until she hit the floor. Because Runa was incorporeal, the wall she hit and the table she landed on were undamaged, but enough of her essence was grounded in the physical plane that she was just as hurt as Zulgha would have been. Little undead skeleton chicks were practically dancing around her head, and even the helmet that covered most of her face slipped partially off, revealing dazed blue eyes as her black hair came undone from its two braids.

Pulling her eyes away from her unprepared comrade, Zulgha grinned with her gummy smile, delighted that she no longer had a reason to play nice. "The gloves are off, you steaming pile of bird-"

"Terror fiend, defend my honor!"

Interrupting the orc necrophyte mid sentence, Babagaya rubbed some sort of a trinket that rendered her summon instantaneous. Without even the typical rubix cube of fel symbols that signified a summoning circle, a ginormous winged, hooved, horned demon materialized right in the middle of the hut. With teeth and talons and a sabre and a whip and fire coming out of his nostrils, the terror fiend looked like the red death coming to steamroll the orc caster right then and there...if it weren't for the fact that it was so big that it couldn't even move inside of the hut.

"What did you do this time?" the terror fiend bellowed at the gnome wedged in between him and the wall. It was almost curled into a ball and even when it tried to flap his wings in frustration, it found that one was wedged in between the rafters and the other was inside of the reagant storage beneath the loft.

"What - it's not for you to question me!"

By that time, nine skeletons had already filed in behind Zulgha. A few of them looked as if they were about to charge up the loft, but the necrophyte had other plans.

"Cut that thing's throat out so it doesn't alert the guards!" Zulgha hissed while pointing at the shocked terror fiend.

Grunting in frustration as it tried to slide free of all the furniture, support beams and pesky walls boxing it in, the terror fiend actually began to look worried. "Why would you summon me in the middle of one of your puny Azerothian dwellings in the first place!" it yelled, this time a bit more urgently as the skeletons impaled its wrists and ankles with their greatswords to pin it down.

"What did I tell you about questioning my - uh oh..."

Babagaya was so focused on her demon's insolence that she hadn't noticed Zulgha walk halfway up the stairs. "Double dare you, twerp," the orc taunted, her eyes glowing red.

Defiance shone in the little gnome's eyes, and she rolled up the sleeves of her demonic robes. "Alright," Babagaya huffed while wiggling her energy-laden fingers, "let's see what you're made of when you get him by my shadow-"

Cutting her off, Zulgha pressed her pointer to her thick lips and whispered: "Hush."

- _bolt_ , Babagaya mouthed soundlessly at the end of her sentence. Her eyes widened like saucers as the dark energy dissipated from around her, and she waved her arms a few more times in an attempt to cast again. _You silenced me, you freaking cheater?_ she silently mouthed again.

Zulgha grinned wide and flashed her gums as she pulled a burlap sack that had been tucked beneath her rope belt. "All's fair in love and war!" she hissed, lunging upward for her target.

Like a dropped bar of soap in the shower, Babagaya shot away from the bag and slid down the banister, ignoring her own demon as the skeleton soldiers severed its wings, limbs and horns without actually having the mercy to kill it. Runa stumbled to her feet, readjusting her helmet as Babagaya slid beneath the val'kyr's long legs and rushed out the door.

Realizing that her silence spell wouldn't last forever, Zulgha stuffed the bag into the neck of her robes and tried to give chase. "Runa, get your ass out here and help me catch Shadowcleft before she alerts the bruisers!" the orc huffed as she faced down her second greatest enemy after stairs: running.

Outside, the isolated, undeveloped part of the goblin city was dark, but the enchantments on Babagaya's robes left a demonic trail wherever she went. "Damnit, I should've worn shoes," Zulgha huffed again as she removed her flip flops and stuffed one in each pocket of her acolyte's robe.

Barefoot and royally pissed off, Zulgha dodged puddles and dirt as she followed Babagaya's trail toward a commercial district. There were a good thirty seconds left to her spell, and she felt herself panic a little as thoughts of such an easy capture quest failing mocked her in the back of her head. Her fear spiked when she heard the sound of little fists beating on a door; the gnome didn't need her voice to cause noise via other means.

Like a bat out of hell, Runa sped right by Zulgha, turning a corner on a dime and growling in fury and probably a lot of heated embarrassment through grit teeth. Zulgha followed her, but she already heard the sound of a fist crashing against a face prior to even rounding the corner herself. There, right at the doorstep of what appeared to be the workshop and house of a hatter, was one slumped over gnome with a lump on her head and Runa looking rather unpretentious for once as she folded her arms over her chest plate like a bruiser watching a troublesome traveler.

"Stupid, Shadow-damned Alliance scum..." the val'kyr muttered under her breath as she folded her wings behind her back and didn't even bother striking a pose.

"Damn, you pulled a nice one there," Zulgha said while slapping Runa on the back. It was weird; she couldn't feel anything at all, but her hand stopped moving in midair as if it had collided with a solid wall; as an apprentice of the dark arts, she made a mental note to research why ghosts were suspectible to physical damage later. For the time being, she busied herself kneeling down to inspect Babagaya's vital signs. "She's still alive, which is exactly what we need."

"She's lucky that our quest objectives mandate her survival," Runa muttered again.

Just then, hoof clops sounded off from the other side of the door, and the pair were once again caught unaware as they found someone else listening in on their conversation. The hatter who lived above his shop, an older draenei fellow wearing a fedora, apparently decided to see what all the racket was about, and Zulgha just barely managed to stand over Babagaya's body and hide the gnome with the excess fabric of her robes.

The man stood in the open doorway, noticing that Zulgha's robes were billowing from recent movement but otherwise more concerned with two obviously non-Alliance citizens on his doorstep at night. "Can I...help you?" he asked suspiciously.

Zulgha froze, peering at Runa via her peripheral vision and finding that the val'kyr looked just as lost as she did. Seconds passed like hours and a hoof tap spoke of the hatter's impatience. A light bulb went off in Zulgha's mind and she pulled the bag out from where she'd wedged it in her bra.

"Trick or treat!" she chirped while giving the hatter innocent puppy dog eyes, as if she hadn't just led a hostile takeover of one of his neighbors' workshops.

Furrowing his forehead crest, the hatter stared at them in disbelief. After all, Zulgha was a little old to be asking for candy door-to-door and Runa was partially transparent and obviously to just a kid in a costume. Shaking his his in disapproval, the hatter reached behind his door and pulled out two pamphlets with pictures of naaru on them, handing one each to the two women on his doorstep.

"May the Light guide your heathen souls," he mumbled as he shut the door.

Only when the sounds of hoof clops disappeared on the second floor did Zulgha finally toss the tome-thumping pamphlet into the trash. "Alright, let's get this little mongrel over to Kaelystia for freezing," she said while dragging the surprisingly heavy gnome into the burlap bag. "Runa, can you carry her?"

The val'kyr didn't even bother looking up from her pamphlet. "I'm a little bit busy." So busy, in fact, that she knocked over a garbage can while flying back toward the others, creating a ton of noise that caused Zulgha to bristle.


	5. Test, Record, Retest

The anticipation was incredible. For an older undead gentleman, the sensation of a racing pulse was a treasured rarity. It was only so often that anything could surprise him, much less excite him in such a manner. But such an occasion was most certainly out of the ordinary...and thankfully, even his staff understood that it was a time to remain quiet and wait.

Gradually, Babagaya's eye movement sped up beneath her eyelids, the larger number of candles in the reeducation chamber pushing her now warm body to wake. Groggy eyes blinked, and her head rolled around on the examination table she was strapped to. Beakers, tesla coils and distillation contraptions lined the walls, in addition to a formidable collection of surgical tools. Dr. Bunsenburger was there, waiting with his arms folded behind a fresh lab coat as Zulgha and a few skeleton knights flanked him. The door to the corridor outside was open, but all she could see were the shadows of other, creepier minions passing against the wall as they crossed an intersection inside the maze-like laboratory, and the angry yet resigned expression on her face signaled to the good doctor that she understood that the current room she found herself restrained in was probably the safest for her.

After a few futile attempts to pull free, Babagaya gave up and tried to put up a strong front. "I'll never talk!" she said defiantly, garnering a hearty chuckle from Dr. Bunsenburger and a strange bobbing movement from the skeletons as if they were mimicking the movement of his chest cavity when laughing.

"Nobody expects you to; this isn't a political game, or any sort of attempt to coerce you into submitting Alliance secrets," he explained calmly, almost politely, as he walked in front of her restraint table so they could see eye to eye. "Truth be told, I still retain professional contacts with former colleagues who fled to Stormwind; this is not a factional issue. This is a more...scholarly one."

"Spit it out, you rotting sack of maggots: what do you want?"

"I admire that fire; you'll need it. So here's what's going to happen...you're going to summon various demons on my command, and you're going to keep them summoned while we take them into the examination room."

"Or else?"

That fire led Babagaya to steel her scowl, and Bunsenburger could already sense a stonewall attempt drawing near. Not at all in the mood to negotiate, he motioned for Zulgha to approach as well. The orcess had been an acolyte of the Scourge and later the Cult of the Damned before growing disillusioned and joining the Forsaken; while she lacked directly damaging, offensive spells, her talents for spreading the Blight would prove quite useful here.

Once Bunsenburger stepped away, Zulgha rolled her sleeves up like when she and Babagaya had thrown down back at Ratchet. The gnome continued to glare at her, but Bunsenburger noticed Babagaya's rapid breathing.

"Your people are interesting, Shadowcleft," Zulgha said while conjuring corrupting death magic. "You're so small, yet so hardy; there are ailments and curses that would fell ogres but would only give a gnome a bit of a cough. And your resistance to corruption is quite impressive."

Without any flash or pomp, Zulgha pointed toward Babagaya's exposed, shoeless foot, and the undeath in her own living hands disappeared. Miniature, localized Blight materialized on the skin of Babagaya's foot, turning the skin a dark green color and covering it in boils as Babagaya began to transform into a leper gnome from the bottom up.

"Stop! **Stop**! I'll do it!" the gnomish warlock yelled, more angry than frightened. Zulgha backed off after the corruption reached ankle high, ceding the floor again to Bunsenburger. "Light damn you all to hell!"

"That was a done deal long ago, my friend," Bunsenburger said with a grim smile. "Now, she backed off; it's time for your end of the bargain."

"This isn't a bargain, this is extortion!"

At least possessing the common decency to allow Babagaya her righteous fury, Bunsenburger ignored her attitude and tried to maintain professional distance from her character. "If you could summon your felhunter, please, then we can get started; that's what we have the most experience with. We'll need it to cooperate while we perform our experiment as well."

"You bastard, you Light damned bastard," she grumbled as one of the skeletons unstrapped a single arm. Her casting time was doubled, but after a few moments of the demonic cube glowing in the floor, a real, live felhunter crawled out of it.

The eyeless creature glanced around the room at first, the spikes on its back bristling at the skeletons who'd captured its master. Backing up to the corner as if ready to pounce, the felhunter suddenly stopped and raised its snout as if sniffing the air. Grinning in amusement, Bunsenburger wondered just how laden the air in his laboratory was with magical residue as the felhunter shook its long head around in confusion, probably overwhelmed by the magic, magic everywhere. It even chased its own tail in a few circles and began wheezing nervous noises like a dog trying to catch a trapped squirrel.

Not wanting the humor of the display to distract from his experiment, Bunsenburger snapped his fingers at the skeletons. "Take it to Barghash and Runa in the examination room; we'll need to begin shortly. And it needs to be severely injured anyway for the apexis crystals to hold it in stasis, so no need to be gentle."

On cue, one of the skeletons stopped the felhunter's enraptured doggy dance by impaling its hindquarters on its sword. Demons were tough, and the creature didn't screech so much as it grunted in response to a foreign object bothering it. Before it could rear up and bite, another skeleton stabbed it through its snout from top to bottom jaw, leaving it impaled on both ends as the two undead soldiers carried it like a giant shish kebab skewer. The demon growled in protest but couldn't wriggle free, and was carried the next room over without incident.

Turning back toward one of his two captives, Bunsenburger smiled politely in the face of the little gnome's murderface. "I think this arrangement will work out quite nicely," he said as he followed the skeletons out. "Now, if you'll excuse me-"

"Wait, I need to use the toilet!"

Stopping himself at the doorway, Bunsenburger lightly smacked his own forehead. "Oh my...it seems I forgot about a significant detail. You two," he said while pointing at some of the skeletons, "accompany miss Shadowcleft; don't leave her alone for a second and strap her right back onto that table when she's done."

"But I have to take a dump! This isn't fair-"

"Oh shush!" Zulgha said, silencing the gnomish warlock in mid sentence.

"Thank you, Zulgha."

"No problem, doc; I'll spam spell lock on her, too."

After an approving nod, Bunsenburger strode down the hallway, fielding questions from a few minions, signing off on a delivery of frozen hearts and assigning an assistant ghoul to a visiting scholar from Andorhol in his library before he could even reach the examination room. Taking a deeper breath than his body needed, one of Brill's busiest people tried to clear his mind of everything else before he entered the examination room.

Inside, more tesla coils, distillation chambers and instruments both magical and surgical lined the walls, all of it surrounding another restraining table in the center. Pylons topped by apexis crystals formed a hexagonal grid, the restrained and badly beaten felhunter tied down in the middle of it all. Barghash and Runa stood in one corner behind a protective metal barrier (which Runa probably didn't need), and the skeletons were at the ready in case the demon needed to be softened up even more. All was in place.

Stepping behind a control panel containing enchanted scales and graphs to test magical readings as well as vital signs, Bunsenburger inspected the results granted by the electrodes which the skeletons had roughly stabbed into the restrained felhunter's flesh. The creature was one of fel corruption; even the arcane magic enchanted into the room's instruments and the death magic lingering in the air pretty much everywhere in Brill were converted into demonic magic by the felhunter's endocrine system. The mere presence of apexis crystals charged up by arcane magic and attuned to block lay lines leading to the Twisting Nether was already wearing on the felhunter's essence; a separate reading for essence, separate from a soul reading, indicated that it was already starting to fade out of the totality of existence, neither passing on to the Nether or any sort of an afterlife. Permadeath was the only result of demons killed in such a fashion, and there was limited time before the pylons had to be shut off.

But more than anything, Bunsenburger noticed that the injured felhunter bleeding fel Fire was still _alive_. As frightening as demonic corruption was to the living, demons were still living creatures themselves: biologically immortal but capable of permadeath thanks to strides made by the few draenei contacts who his pre-Third War colleagues had convinced to deal with him cordially.

Once Bunsenburger was comfortable with the readings, he motioned toward one of the skeletons and then the felhunter. "Just a little bit off the top," he instructed, and the skeleton promptly chopped off the felhunter's two back tentacles, most of its back spines and chunk of demonic meat. "Perfect; it's near death. That's quite enough. Now, let's increase the frequency of the pylons..."

Slowly, oh so slowly, Bunsenburger slid a lever upward, keeping an eye on the felhunter's readings as he did so. He needed the demon's vital signs and essence to decrease in tandem; if it died from its wounds too early, it would escape back to the Nether, and if its essence dissipated first, it would simply be erased from every single plane of existence, at least in their universe.

Ashes began to flake off of the felhunter's back, falling more quickly as it struggled under the restraints. The demon was in a precarious position: it was impossible for the skeletons to attack it any more without killing it, but the ashy flakes of fel fire were a signal not that it was burning, but that it was disintegrating down to its very soul. Steeling his nerve and trying not to let himself become excited, Bunsenburger reduced the pylon frequency, attempting to preemptively reduce the disintegration of the felhunter. The process had already started, however, and the demon's very being continued to burn up even as its life bled out of it. When it stopped struggling, Bunsenburger realized that it was now dying too fast and had to increase the frequency again. Such was the back and forth game be played for a few moments, his concentration on the control panel until Barghash cleared his throat.

Understanding that his colleague intended him to look forward at the experiment rather than backward to speak, Bunsenburger squinted his eyes and examined the felhunter again. The ashes had slowed down almost to a halt, and the profuse bleeding had mostly stopped.

Frozen in place, Bunsenburger's jaw dropped open as he wondered if what he was seeing was true. Eyes darting in between his scales and his specimen, he read and reread every single measurement he could. The ashes continued at their slow rate; the felhunter was going to disintegrate into nothingness no matter what he did, but that wasn't a problem at this point.

Removing his goggles and stepping toward the table, he poked the lifeless body before him. "Doctor Freidrich Bunsenburger, calling it at seven thirty eight in the evening, Tuesday, July fourteenth...the felhunter has died," he said out loud, almost numb from joy and shock.

"It's dissipating, though," Runa said, her voice laced with confusion.

Bunsenburger turned around with a sweeping motion, his hand still on the dead demon's neck to feel for signs of life. "It doesn't matter...we did it! It will disintegrate because the process already went too far, but don't you see? Oh, by the Shadow, it's been at least a minute and it hasn't fully disintegrated yet!"

The felhunter's entire hindquarters and flanks became detached and fell off, not from rot or physical damage, but from their particles pulling apart and disappearing. A fiery mess started in the floor, but even the flames themselves faded out of existence, leaving a charred husk of a frontal portion still strapped to the lab table. Squeezing the mangled snout just to ensure that it was still intact, Bunsenburger laughed evilly as he felt the solid mass of a piece of a dead demon that remained on their mortal plane for two minutes, then three minutes as Barghash and Runa continued to observe quietly.

At four minutes, the shoulders and chest cavity were remaining, and the ashes had stopped. The electrodes which had been stabbed into other parts of the felhunter's body had scattered on the floor without a solid anchor, and Bunsenburger picked them up and stabbed them into the remaining demon meat himself before rushing back to his control panel.

"Yes...yes! Turn the pylons off!" One of the skeletons pulled a switch on the wall, and the apexis crystals progressively stopped glowing. Once the area was safe (at least for Barghash, who was the only living person there), the necromancer and the val'kyr both stepped out to view the remaining husk more closely.

"It's dead...yet separated from the a Twisting Nether," Barghash marveled, inspecting every inch of the felhunter husk.

Runa appeared less than convinced. "It's just meat and bones, though...what can we do?"

"For starters, we need to put the remains into stasis; I want to attach this to a ghoul made from human remains tonight and see if we can perform regular flesh shaping with demon corpses the way we mix and match mortal corpses. But that isn't the point...oh no!" Bunsenburger cackled, clenching his gloved fist in victory. "We kept a demon alive and mostly intact for at least three minutes...the only issue was the exact frequencies, vital signs...the right conditions! That can easily be achieved through further practice. We need..."

Rushing over to his only stationary drawer in the examination room, he grabbed a sheet of graph paper and a pencil and started jotting ideas down. Barghash immediately understood and started assisting with listing.

"Warlocks swear a blood pact with each demon type, so they only have one of each; once they lose one type for good, it's forever, so Babagaya no longer has a felhunter to offer."

"Good! This is good stuff," Bunsenburger said as he traced lines for a list. "What does that leave us with?"

"Not her felhunter and not her voidwalker, since voidwalkers are technically spawn of the Void and not the Nether," Runa chimed in, and Bunsenburger had to quickly erase what he'd already been writing.

"Yes, I forgot, they aren't technically demons...hard to kill and reanimate a gaseous being anyway."

"Her succubus, felguard, terror fiend...infernal?" Barghash asked.

"I don't think so; it's more like an elemental or a conjured minion than a living thing. We need _living_ specimens."

"What about her imps?" Runa asked. "Some warlocks spawn wild imps at random when casting."

"Hmm...no, no I'd rather not deal with that; there's too much flammable reagants here. A single imp she can control like the felhunter is fine. That leaves us with...four more demons we can extort from Babagaya."

Runa balked. "You're including her terror fiend?"

"You and Zulgha handled that thing pretty well, from what I heard."

"Uh...what? Oh, yeah!" Runa replied nervously. Bunsenburger suspected that the story was bogus, but the coping mechanisms of those under his employ were the least of his concerns. "The sk...we drew and quartered it and it didn't die; that might be enough damage to put it near death, plus it would be easier to prevent it from damaging the equipment if it was just a body and a head. The room might not be large enough otherwise."

"Alright, great stuff. So, from Babagaya, we can still squeeze...four more demons. Matero can provide five since he still has his felhunter, putting us at a total of nine demons. That means we only have nine more chances to do this until we have to either risk kidnapping people again, or we have to send the others to Outland to abduct an unbound demon again, and that was far too cost inefficient."

Both of his colleagues fell silent for a moment, staring at the low tally on the graph paper. Knowing that they were likely still expecting him to lead, he set the paper down and turned to face them both.

"This was only our second attempt on a live test subject, and we came so close this time...all I need to do is refine the technique. Once I can cut off a fully dead demon corpse from the Nether, you two will be able to begin your phase."

"And if we end with only one demon corpse, how will we approach its reanimation?" Barghash asked. "This has never been done before; we have no idea if even a demon corpse separated from the Twisting Nether can be reanimated in the same exact fashion as the corpses of mortals."

"We will approach phase two in the same way that we approach phase one: trial and error. We'll do this again, and again, and again, refining our technique every single time. No matter how many times we must repeat the process, we _will_ succeed eventually, because this is for **science**!" Bunsenburger raised a clenched fist to the sky to emphasize his last point, striking a pose that would even make Runa envious. "And we _will_ prevail!"


	6. The Execution

"Thank you for traveling on the Horde zeppelin service direct from Silvermoon to Brill! For those continuing on to other destinations, please check the departures notice board at the lobby."

Few had waited for the disgustingly cheery undead captain to finish her announcement before rushing to collect their belongings, filling the aisles with their grotesqueness. Since the flight had been on-continent, there were no private rooms available, and everybody had to pack themselves in with each other like sardines. It was just the sort of low class trip that one typically tried to avoid, and another reason why Zanien questioned himself yet again as to why he accepted Bunsenburger's pathetic plea.

"It's 'in' the lobby, not 'at' the lobby," he muttered under his breath as he fought his way among the unwashed masses to exit the flying vessel.

Down the stairwell and into the processing of arrivals, he just tried to tune out all the droning, sullen voices of the undead as he waited in line for his Horde identification to receive the required entry stamps. How he detested seeing his face in a gnomish-produced photograph next to an insignia that belonged to the orcs. In a world of warcraft, no people could survive for long without allies, and Zanien understood full well that the Alliance had outlived its usefulness. But of all other nations...why the Horde? Why a faction including the Forsaken? Why leaders who shared their round table with the Queen of the Damned, the fallen disgrace, the blight on their people's history?

By the time he'd passed customs and exited the central courtyard of the zeppelin station, Zanien had managed to calm himself down and acclimate to his abhorrent environs. A person of his stature traveled frequently to network, and he was no stranger to Tirisfal Glades; he just needed a few minutes in the beginning to overcome the shock of walking among a people who amounted to no more than tamed, submissive Scourge. He'd been to few places as bad, but he'd built up a tolerance over the years.

Zanien's train of thought was broken by the sight of a well-dressed, albeit undead, coachman beside the road holding up a sign with his name written on it. At first he wasn't even sure if he was reading the sign properly; so rarely did services in Horde territory function with any signs of efficiency, and long waits and delays were common. For his chartered transportation from the zeppelin station to Brill to be waiting for him on time was difficult to believe.

"Are you the warlock Zanien, sir?" the undead human asked.

A pleased smile forced its way onto Zanien's face despite his attempt to suppress it. "That I am, driver; did Bunsenburger send you?"

"Yes sir; he was very insistent that your time not be wasted."

"That my time not...hmm, I like that," Zanien allowed to slip out loud before regaining his composure. "Yes, well, my luggage is here; I take it that one of these is yours?" he asked while motioning toward several open-air wagons pulled by skeletal horses.

At that, the undead coachman chuckled awkwardly. "By the Shadow, no! Our company runs a proper transport service. We're over there." The man pointed toward a closed, proper carriage. The design was very much the Forsaken style, but the drapes covering the windows implied that the passenger would actually be able to relax on the trip.

"Well...this isn't as terrible as I'd expected," Zanien said, trying his best not to sound _too_ positive in front of inferior life forms.

The coachman picked up the luggage without even being instructed to do so and led the way to the carriage, loading everything inside and even holding the door open like a proper peon. "Our estimated time of arrival from the zeppelin station to Dr. Bunsenburger's laboratory in the industrial district is forty five minutes," the undead man said before closing the carriage door after Zanien had entered.

"That was...shockingly easy," the warlock mused to himself once he was alone and able to kick his shoes off. He'd managed to go from the zeppelin to the skeletal horse drawn carriage without speaking to anyone other than the customs officer and the driver; there were no beggars or hucksters or general time wasters attempting to speak to him.

Once the carriage began to move, Zanien opened his briefcase, reviewing what little documentation he had in order to prepare himself for whatever nonsense he was about to witness. Had it not been for Bunsenburger's appropriate admission of fault, Zanien would never have come; even with all of his expenses paid, the trip was of little benefit for such a waste of resources. The admission, however, was what had sealed the deal; anticipation of hearing it in person was more of a motivating factor than was Bunsenburger's cry for help.

Flipping through the loose documents, Zanien pulled out the letter he'd received several weeks ago and gave it another good read.

 _My esteemed friend,_

 _I hope that my letter finds you in good health. I'll get to the point: I was wrong, and now I need you help._

 _I realize now the folly of attempting to force something in violation of natural and magical laws. For too long I've wasted resources and time chasing this fantasy, and I might have continued doing so for longer had you not so forcefully intervened. I sit here, as I write, as a man with very little to show for my efforts._

 _Zanien, I proverbially throw myself at your feet. I will be asked to demonstrate what results my efforts have produced shortly; I've changed my focus entirely to a more realistic goal: to capture wild demons in Outland and more easily bind them to the will of mortal warlocks._

 _This is obviously not my field, but it is yours; a colleague was gracious enough to loan me a copy of your thesis on the subduing of wild felguards, Andy was thoroughly impressed. It's rare to find a mind capable of thinking so far outside of the box, and I now ask myself why I hadn't turned to your work as a source of inspiration previously._

 _Due to my own limited understanding, I will require assistance if I want to submit some sort of demonstrable result to our authorities here by the deadline. I don't expect that I'll a miracle or even a particularly notable result, but as long as I can show_ _ **something**_ _to my superiors, I'll be in the clear. I won't mince words: I need your help, Zanien. There's nobody else possessing your expertise, and without your aid, I fear that my career may be finished._

 _What I'm requesting of you is your presence to review my method of keeping a captured felguard under stun lock. It's only a minor innovation to one of your standing, but it will be enough to satisfy my handlers. If you agree to come as a consultant on my methods for preventing escape back to the Nether, I'll both cover all of your travel expenses as well as credit to you the remainder of my grant as an honorarium - that's two thousand gold for what I wouldn't expect to be more than a few hours of advisory work on your part. Of course, I don't expect you to just turn around and fly all the way back on the same day either. There's a five star hotel here in town that caters to the living, and I'll gladly reserve two nights for you there._

 _Please consider my offer carefully. You did me a service by refusing to enable my frivolous usage of funds; if you can save my career with just two days of your time, I'll see to it that you're properly rewarded without any raised eyebrows from tax collectors._

 _Your desperate friend,_

 _Freidrich Bunsenburger_

"Oh you deluded fool," Zanien chuckled as he stuffed the letter back into his briefcase.

Of course such work was a minor innovation; were the undead so ignorant of the ways of truly mastering dark forces and bringing them to heel that they'd be impressed by stun locking a demonic foot soldier? Zanien could oversee such work in under half an hour. What was even better, he could use those funds that the ignorant undead doctor was offering him to support his own research into the exact method of commandeering the vision of wild imps. And the thought of a nice rest at a proper establishment, assuming that it truly did cater to the normal people of the world, was a nice addition as well.

Settling in to his seat, Zanien spent the rest of the ride reviewing his own notes, not concerning himself with whatever it was Bunsenburger wanted at all. This was a stepping stone in the warlock's own career path and nothing more; he truly didn't care about Bunsenburger's career in and of itself, though if the talking corpse proved to be a legal source of income in the future, then there was a tangible benefit in helping to keep his sham of an operation running.

Before he even knew it, the carriage came to a stop, and the familiar sound of hollow undead grunting signaled that they'd arrived. Quickly closing his briefcase of work documentation, Zanien was surprised to find the coachman already opening the door for him and left his luggage inside.

"Ensure that my luggage is delivered to this hotel which Bunsenburger told me about. I'll be staying for one night."

"Of course, sir," the coachman replied, promptly climbing back up into the driver's seat and hurrying along his way, providing Zanien a wider view of Brill's industrial area.

Forsaken territory was often a mess due to their obsession with recycling. Just like their decrepit bodies, the odd excuses for people insisted on salvaging and reusing everything they found instead of manufacturing materials from scratch. Factories for piecing together everything from wagons to cabinetry to tools abounded, producing their functional but plainly ugly wares for resale to the equally ugly citizens of this cursed nation.

Bunsenburger's compound was one of the few properties in the area to feature any grass. In between the buildings behind his walls, there was a shockingly fertile patch that almost resembled the less corrupt areas of the Ghostlands, though it was still sullied by the presence of undead soldiers and dogs practicing what appeared to be drills. Zanien only had to wait just inside the gate for another moment before Bunsenburger himself emerged from the main laboratory building to greet him.

"Zanien, you've arrived! Thank you so much," the undead quack said while offering his (thankfully gloved) hand. "Words cannot express the favor you're doing me!"

"I'll keep that in mind, then," Zanien replied, ensuring that he withheld outwardly positive comments for the sake of maintaining power in the relationship. When he didn't elaborate, Bunsenburger began rambling as he knew the doctor would.

"Yes, well, let's not lose any more time! The specimen is contained inside, if you'd be kind enough to follow me." The two of them began to walk inside the gargoyle-covered central building, passing a few putrid regiments of ghouls marching with, of all things, a Wretched in tattered clothing among them.

Immediately, Zanien bristled; he absolutely detested seeing those of his kind who'd allowed themselves to degenerate due to a lack of diligence, and as uncomfortable as he was, he felt that whoever it was probably more suited to living amongst the undead anyway. Perhaps he could suggest to his government, upon his return, that the Wretched be rounded up and send to the Forsaken...

"Hey...hey..." the former elf wheezed in what sounded more like wind passing through a tube than a proper voice. "Matero...I Matero...help brother-"

"Help yourself, 'brother,'" Zanien mumbled just before he high double doors of the laboratory shut behind them, thankfully saving him from having to think about a class of his society he liked to pretend didn't exist.

In this one case, Zanien was thankful that his foolish host was a motormouth. "We have the specimen contained just down the hall here," Bunsenburger said as they passed through a set of shorter double doors that read 'authorized personnel only.' "We haven't damaged it much, but it's no longer moving and I'm unfortunately not informed enough to know whether we should worry about the long term effects of keeping a demon stun locked."

"As even a first year apprentice could tell you, there will be permanent neurological effects if a demon is rendered unconscious enough times without being allowed to reform their bodies in the Nether," Zanien huffed, trying his best to remain cordial with such amateur questions. "But that same first year apprentice could also tell you that a demon isn't a pet; it's a minion. Their safety is not your concern; your safety is their concern. You should only worry about keeping it subdued, and about not damaging it quite enough for it to shift back into the Nether."

Like a true fraud, Bunsenburger pretended to understand. "Yes, it makes perfect sense...I'll make sure to keep that in mind." Tired of humoring the man after only a few moments of discussion, Zanien didn't bother answering and merely followed Bunsenburger through the maze-like restricted area of the lab. The halls were empty of minions and all of the doors to various miscellaneous rooms were shut. "I made sure to clear everyone else out, by the way," Bunsenburger said as they rounded a nondescript corner and entered the only open room in another long hallway. "I assumed you'd need to focus in order to provide a good assessment quickly."

"Your assumption proved correct this time, and...what?"

Zanien stopped himself once they entered the containment room. Devoid of any electrical equipment, the room's shelves were mostly empty aside from brand new enchanting and conjuration tools that warlocks were more used to using. One fel meter for measuring demonic corruption even still had a price tag on it, and Zanien was a bit flattered - for once - at the thought that Bunsenburger must have purchased brand new instruments in anticipation of his arrival.

Most striking, however, was the specimen on a mortician's table in the center of the room. Stripped of its helmet, gauntlet and boots, a real, actual felguard laid on the table. Due to the spikes that grew from its back, it had been laid on its stomach, but the demon was larger than the humans who the mortuary table had been designed for and its head dangled off just far enough to reveal the wrinkled, prune-like skin typical of its species as well as the total lack of a nose, which was new even for the warlock. Similarly, the felguard's bare feet were exposed as well. While the construction of their boots made it impossible for them to have hooves, it was still the first time that Zanien had seen one barefoot.

It also wasn't moving at all.

"It doesn't appear to be..." Zanien was about to say 'breathing,' but he stopped himself out of concern that he'd appear uninformed in front of a layman. "How long has it been unconscious for?"

Bunsenburger scratched his head like an imbecile. "Oh...maybe an hour...or two? Give or take." Even the tone of his voice was noncommittal.

"There's a bit of a difference between one hour and double that amount of time," Zanien replied while setting down his briefcase on a small desk opposite the tool-laden table. Once again, he had to stop himself before he continued; he was, after all, speaking to a layman who knew nothing about anything, and attempting to reason with him was a lost cause. "Let me take a look at what I have to work with."

Across the room, he began to inspect each of the fel measurement tools. Bunsenburger obviously had outside help to know what he needed; virtually every runed rod, arcane crystal and fel reader that a scholar of demonology would need for an advisory job was available, in addition to a set of grimoires that Zanien would have found patronizing had his host not been a hopelessly misguided idiot.

"That one is used to read the level of fel corruption," Bunsenburger said while pointing over Zanien's shoulder.

"I know what it's for," the blood elf replied tersely, just barely preventing himself from gritting his teeth as he spoke.

"Those arcane crystals were the best that the vendor could smuggle in from the Exodar."

"Arcane crystals either function or they don't; their point of origin is meaningless and having them smuggled in from Alliance territory is just a fancy way to trick rubes into paying inflated prices."

"These books here-"

"Bunsenburger!" Zanien said with a raised voice, giving the undead man pause. Counting to three inside of his mind, the blood elf had to remind himself that he was going to be compensated very well for putting up with an hour or so of annoyance, and tried to reassure his well-paying host. "Look...I need a moment to clear my thoughts and study these great instruments in order to provide you a more accurate assessment. The more detailed my assessment, the better your chances of your authorities here being impressed by your results. I'll use lots of big words, too."

For a few seconds, Zanien worried that he'd gone too far and offended the simpleton's sense of pride. After a few seconds, however, his fears were allayed.

"Do you need some coffee, them? Or a bite to eat while you work?"

"What?! You can't bring food near..." Zanien's eyes widened when he realized that he was staring at an opportunity to just get rid of the quack and provide a routine magic report in peace. "You know what? I could really use a nice coffee, as well as some roast beef. Do they have roast beef in Forsaken towns?"

"They do in Brill!" Bunsenburger replied like an excitable moron. "There's a butcher here from Orgrimmar, and a baker from Thunder Bluff on the other side of town."

"Good, that's good to know. Could you order fresh baked bread and freshly cut beef after getting some freshly ground coffee? I'm worried that the fast and easy, pre-made stuff would be of lower quality."

"Well, that might take a bit longer, but I'll see to it that we can bring you what we need." Bunsenburger tapped his foot in the floor loudly. "Hey Baba!"

The familiar footsteps of a leper gnome scampered out from the hallway and soon after the familiar sickly facial type poked into the room. Zanien was quite familiar with exploiting their labor, and was surprised to find one there in Tirisfal Glades.

"Please ensure that nobody disturbs our guest while he works. I want these halls empty! And please take Runa's cat with you!"

"Yes, master," the decrepit gnome sighed while disappearing into the hall for a second only to reappear with a horrendous undead house cat in her arms. The leper gnome promptly walked away, as she should, and disappeared totally.

Turning around one last time, Bunsenburger looked at Zanien with the sincere gratitude only capable of primitive minds. "Is there anything else you need to complete your work?" the undead quack asked one last time.

"No, thank you. Just those food items and the ability to work undisturbed."

"You've got it!" Bunsenburger said while leaving. Zanien waited until his host's footsteps drifted further and further away, only relaxing and shutting the door when he heard the main double doors of the restricted area shut far away.

"Now it's time to earn that honorarium," he chucked to himself, preparing the standard form for magical reports he tended to submit for routine jobs.

Much of the three page document would be the same in most cases, and he sat down at the desk and took his time filling it out. He had the solitude he'd asked for, and he needed to ensure that he could possibly be called in as a consultant again if Bunsenburger continued to get himself in trouble and require assistance; working as a subcontractor for a fraud could prove to be quite lucrative.

Once all the basic details were filled in, Zanien got to work studying the equipment he'd been left with. All of it was brand new and unused, which was entirely unnecessary and rather frivolous, but flattering in the sense of a higher life form being worshipped by the barely sentient. Everything had been laid out nicely for him, and he'd have an easy time simply taking some readings on a stun locked felguard and inventing some story for the report that would probably be above the heads of even many of his colleagues back at Silvermoon. As long as he could lead the Forsaken authorities to believe that an outside individual had confirmed Bunsenburger's results, then the quack would be free to doctor up some results that matched whatever Zanien wrote about rendering demons unconscious.

After unwrapping and testing out every piece of equipment, Zanien pulled a sheet of scratch paper out of his briefcase and prepared to jot down whatever pointless, irrelevant readings he could take for the sake of impressing others.

A noise caught his attention, and he turned around to scan the walls. There had been movement behind him - his long ears never failed him - and he felt uneasy remembering that he was in the land of the dead. There were probably all sorts of bugs and vermin crawling around, and he'd have to take care not to sully his new shoes. He noticed nothing, however, and went to work inspecting the felguard slumped on the table.

The specimen was certainly strange; the signs of outward injury were more severe than a simple sapping or stunning, and there were multiple scars that hadn't yet healed. Demonic regeneration was different from that of the mortal races, and typically sealed up any wounds that weren't inflicted magically. The scars on the felguard were clearly from an attack by multiple assailants wielding swords, however, and there was even dried demon blood around them. The felguard's body heat was far lower than the two hundred degrees typical for an injured or impaired demon; this one appeared to be almost...cold. Zanien was no physician, but he knew a cold body when he felt one.

Determined to figure out what sort of ice spell Bunsenburger had ordered his minions to cast, Zanien got to work taking measurements. The felguard's magic reading was far less chaotic than normal for a demon; its mana pool was enlarged beyond that of a militant class of demon, though still less than a caster's. There were no spikes in magical activity as there should be with the erratic nature of demons, but there was something...different...

Confused by the readings, Zanien turned back to the table and brought out the fel meter. The device was a combination of enchantment and a minute amount of goblin mechanics for the sake of the numerical reading. Two fel tainted prongs connected to wires formed the measuring portion, and Zanien took his time taking readings of the felled felguard. Immediately, he suspected that the device must be faulty; after taking seven separate readings, he quickly jotted down the numbers and turned back to the table, trying to make sense of it all.

The level of fel corruption in the felguard's essence was startlingly low, maybe not even that higher than Zanien's own personal reading as a blood elf warlock. The felguard was still recognizably a demon, but the reading indicated that its demon-hood - if such a term existed - had waned. Its resistance to fire magic had decreased, yet he detected a strong resistance to ice magic that was unheard of among the Burning Legion's ranks. The presence of shadow magic was curious: the felguard's resistance to shadow magic had increased only slightly, but the presence of shadow corruption was enormous, as well as the influence of another sort of corruption that Zanien didn't recognize.

"What did you cast on this thing, Bunsenburger?" Zanien wondered out loud.

One moment, he was relaxed as he asked himself the silent question. The next moment, his heart nearly jumped into his throat.

"Cast...on...cast..."

Freezing still at first, Zanien blinked his eyes hard and tried to convince himself that he was just hearing things. He guessed that he'd been at work taking readings and crunching numbers for nearly an hour, losing track of the time due to the solitude and the lack of clocks in the room. He wasn't drowsy, however, and his ears were quite perceptive.

"Cast...on...task...paltry...task...a paltry...task..."

The voice was deep like a felguard's, but almost weak, as if its throat was constricted. Sliding all the tools away from himself and turning around, Zanien noticed that the felguard had woken up.

Sitting up in the table with its back to him, the demon's shoulders sagged as it sat hunched over with poor posture. Its bare feet dangled off the table and laid limply on the floor, and the demon's head was so low that it almost wasn't visible.

"A paltry...task...dare summon...a task..."

"Bunsenburger, you incompetent twit," Zanien whispered to himself. Whatever sort of ice stun lock shadow spell they'd used to subdue the demon, it had woken up, and would probably even start healing its wounds in a moment. He couldn't have that.

Knowing that the experiment was a failure no matter what, Zanien bit down on his anger over the most likely lost honorarium and counted the seconds for casting his enslave demon spell. The felguard appeared groggy like a mortal after waking, likely a result of some sort of residual stun effects. Now was his time to strike.

"May you be enslaved," Zanien sighed resentfully, conjuring fel chains that began to orbit around the felguard and slowly close in on its motionless body.

And then the chain stopped spinning around, fell limp and dematerialized.

"What the...?" Zanien whispered to himself again, keeping quiet and absolutely confounded as to how it had resisted his spell. He'd ensaved dreadlords and terror fiends with his spell before; how was this foot soldier resisting?

"Want...slave...paltry slave...for a paltry task..."

The demon sounded even crazier than their kind usually did, mumbling slowly as if there was some sort of a coming storm on the horizon. Not wanting to see if its slurred speech and sluggish body would become more active, Zanien prepared himself to simply get rid of it.

"I banish you back to the Twisting Nether!" he said a little louder, firing a green beam out of his hand and toward the felguard. He then gasped in outrage as the banish beam fizzled out before it even reached its target.

At that point, the felguard took notice and stepped off the mortuary table. Its posture was slouched and completely lacking the usual taut, tense readiness of the Legion's front line. Swinging its head around in a jerky movement like the undead house cat earlier, the demon accidentally knocked the table aside as it appeared to scan the room visually. There was something wrong with it...it was as if the demon had been affected by drugs, yet their constitutions typically flushed such substances out rather quickly. None of what Zanien was witnessing made any sense.

He had no time to weigh his options for subduing the specimen, however; snapping its upper body almost backwards, the demon faced him with its noseless visage. The fel green glow similar to his own had disappeared from its eyes, leaving instead a strange, pale blue glow in its place. The demon's mouth hung open in a strange circle, like a hobgoblin breathing through its mouth, though Zanien heard no breathing.

"Alright, I've had quite enough of this!" he growled as he rubbed a trinket on his finger to immediately trigger the summoning of his own felguard. "Nurlash, correct Bunsenburger's incompetence!"

In an instant, a demonic cube of purple light opened on the ground and his felguard rose out of it. Almost an exact physical copy of the dazed specimen before him, _his_ minion stood tall with proper poster and battle stance, expertly wielding its twisted blade as it stood at the ready...and then faltered.

"What is your bidding, mas...Nether, what the hell is that?" Nurlash asked, visibly startled at the sight of the other, less imposing felguard.

Zanien's anger was immediately directed toward the insolence of his own minion. "It doesn't matter, just kill it!" he shouted, confounded as to why a bound demon would hesitate.

As if his blood couldn't boil anymore, Zanien folded his arms over his chest and tapped his foot as Nurlash raised its blade only to lower in and frown in disgust and confusion. "A paltry task...ugh...Nether take you," Nurlash said after Zanien magically pressed onto its psyche, causing it a measure of neurological pain and bringing it to heel.

Pale blue eyes shot open wide, and the jerky movement of the dazed felguard startled Nurlash just before striking. "A paltry...task?" the deranged demon asked as it leaned forward in an odd, moronic manner at its racial compatriot.

Without tensing up its muscles at all or giving any visual indication of its intent, the deranged felguard lunged. Nurlash was caught off guard, but was still a demon; its reflexes were fast and its awareness beyond that of its race's mortal progenitors. Unfortunately, it was so trained in conventional martial warfare that it hadn't accounted at all for the possibility that its fellow felguard would huddle into its chest like a scared child before biting onto its jugular vein.

"Die!" Nurlash growled as it brought down its blade, finally unhinged enough to show his demonic fury, but only after what appeared to be half of its neck had been torn out and disgustingly chewed up. Nurlash stabbed the other felguard in the heart with its sword, cracking ribs both front and back as the tip of the blade impaled the other felguard's chest.

Tainted blood gushed from Nurlash's neck like a fountain as the deranged felguard stuck its fingers into the gaping wound. Unsure of how to fight an opponent clawing at it like a schoolgirl, Nurlash twisted the blade inside of the deranged demon's chest, slicing an even wider wound as the sword was pulled out with absolutely no blood at all.

"Hurk!" Nurlash gurgled as the other felguard finally stuck its hands deep enough into its throat to pull one of its vertebrae out, paralyzing it and sending it to the floor where it disintegrated back to the Nether immediately. Zanien was not impressed.

"So you're a wild one, are you? It seems I'll have to do this myself!" Rubbing his second trinket - a copy of the first - Zanien felt the drag on his mana pool as he brought his voidwalker into the world.

"Send me back!" the gaseous blue cloud demanded as it smoked into being.

"No, now distract this thing while I kill it!" Zanien ordered while he prepared a spell to toast the bizarrely less fire resistant demon.

The voidwalker looked at Zanien with more resentment than it did at the felguard. "Your will...be done," it said before turning to its opponent. "May your sould be nothing but torment!" it hissed as it shot vines of shadows out from its palm. The vines wrapped around the felguard, assaulting its psyche and very being with a mental pain that would cause mortal and demon alike to focus all their rage on the blue cloud of pure agony.

Except the felguard didn't seem to care. Ignoring the voidwalker entirely, it stared at Zanien with its hollow eyes, the gross wound in its chest hanging open with no signs of demonic healing. "Paltry...master...a paltry...master..." it droned at him while reaching forward with one of its bloody hands.

"This has gone on long enough!" the warlock yelled while sending a blast of hellfire straight at the outstretched hand. Sure enough, the acrid odor of burned flesh filled the air, along with a putrid stench of rot that was common for mortal corpses. The felguard didn't react at all, its silhouette remaining still through the flames and the dark vines of agony.

With its arm still on fire and atrocious flesh dripping onto the floor, the felguard lunged again. "A paltry task!" it growled in its warped, choked voice, grabbing ahold of Zanien's cloak with its flaming hand.

"Argh!" he grunted as he tore his own flaming cloak off, throwing it in the demon's face. Jumping and rolling across the floor, Zanien tried to catch his breath at the other side of the room, choking on smoke as he yelled at his voidwalker. "Attack you-"

"Waaaa..." the voidwalker hissed in a gradually disappearing voice. Zanien didn't see what had occurred; he only turned around to see his voidwalker fade away and the deranged felguard standing where it had been, the flesh of its right arm seared off to the point where the individual muscle groups were discernible.

The deranged felguard cocked its head sideways, held its skinless arm out and began lurching toward him in those unnerving, jerking movements again. Trying to use his trinkets again, Zanien found that they were unresponsive and his mana pool was drained after summoning two minions in rapid succession. Counting the seconds, he realized that he wouldn't have enough time to summon anything except for his imp before the demonic abomination reached him and sufficed for an escape plan.

The purple cube appeared on the floor in front of him, rotating more quickly than with the other demon's due to the lower rank of the minion involved. Sweat beat down his brow as the felguard lurched even closer to his corner of the room, its blank expression never changing even as it reached for him-

"Stop!" he yelled as the felguard grabbed him by the hand, just barely disrupting his cast at the very end but not quickly enough to prevent the imp from being summoned behind it. What the felguard did have time for, however, was to yank Zanien over toward it and bite a chunk of flesh out of his hand.

Zanien screamed, both in anger and agony as a surprisingly low amount of pain shot up to his wrist. The bite was clean and smooth, and there wasn't any phantom pain as he pulled away and fell into the desk behind him. The blood was frightening, however, and he started to drain the life of the felguard before even running away in an attempt to heal his hand. Rather than the cool soothing feeling that numbed his pain and regrew lost flesh per the usual, Zanien suddenly felt sick to his stomach, his scream stopped by gagging as nausea took over and his hand - instead of regenerating - simply scarred over sans the missing chunk of meat.

"Burn, zombie, burn!" the imp cackled as it blasted the felguard's back with flames. The enemy demon didn't even move or wince in pain, but quickly turned around and grabbed the imp before it had a chance to run. "It's eating my brains!" the imp squeaked before babbling, gagging and falling still, its death unviewable from Zanien's vantage point in a corner. The felguard groaned deep in its throat, like a dwarven miner receiving a draenei massage at the end of the day.

Anger boiled up into Zanien's throat like acid reflux, slowly being pushed out of his mouth in the form of dirty words. All of it was draining out of him faster than he could hold on to its power, scaring him as a realization slowly dawned: his hands were shaking. His heart was pounding. His bladder was pressing against his stomach. Feeling his teeth clatter, he fled the room as the felguard devoured his imp, running through the corridor and trying to open the first door he found.

"Demons are not zombies!" he shouted back down the hall at his own insolent minion, kicking the first door in anger when it wouldn't open. His hand still hurt with every rapid heartbeat, and he cussed up another storm when he felt the deformed indentation of the flesh that wouldn't regenerate from the wild felguard's life force.

The noises back down the hallway stopped, and Zanien continued running, trying to get a head start since the felguard didn't sound like it was following him. Turning a corner in the maze that was the restricted area, he passed multiple doors in both sides, every twist and turn looking exactly the same. Panic set in as he remembered that the lab and appeared to be mostly closed with any decorations or furniture moved out - whether for renovations or maintenance didn't matter when he was running for his life, but he realized that he was alone.

After the fifth locked door, Zanien tried to catch his breath. Not a sound could be heard, but he couldn't feel his mana pool refilling itself - he was still in combat. Pulling out a single flask of mana potion, he chugged it too quicky, feeling the noxious liquid mix with the nausea he'd already felt after draining the wild felguard's life. A second form of panic settled in when his stomach gurgled; if he vomited up the mana potion, he'd metaphysically lose his mana along with it. There was no time to think, only to act; finding that both of his trinkets hadn't reset yet, he began summoning his felguard for a second time, knowing that it would be healed after the last fight. The purple cube appeared on the floor beneath him, rotating slowly as the full casting time came into effect.

"A paltry task a paltry task a paltry task a paltry task a paltry task-"

"Yeaaargh!" Zanien yelled, interrupting his own cast as the jerky, uncoordinated lug of a demon snuck up on him so silently that it tore one of his cloth pauldrons off.

Running down the hallway without even thinking, he became confused when he didn't hear the demon chasing him. He rounded the first corner he found, screaming once again when his peripheral vision showed that it was _right directly behind him_ but running without creating any sound at all.

"Noooo!" he yelled again, his voice echoing as the decrepit demon finally grabbed ahold of his robes, pulling him to the ground. Rather than violently beating him or slamming him against the wall like a normal felguard, it tried to pull at his hair and ears like a child in a playground tussle, dragging him back toward it. Looking up, Zanien realized that he had ended up right in front of the two double doors that led out to the unrestricted zone of the laboratory.

He bent his back upward so swiftly that he felt the muscles tear, but his fear had pushed him beyond thinking at that point. Reaching for the doorknob, he saw his salvation drift away as the deranged, bloodless felguard pulled him back by the ears. Pulled into a bear hug by the demon corrupted by something other than the fel, Zanien shouted for help for the last time as the two double doors were stained with blood.


	7. A Subtle Nod

Bunsenburger drank the last of his wine and set the glass down on one of the mayor's shelves. The drink certainly took the edge off; he felt surprisingly relaxed considering the confession he'd just given to the queen of their entire nation about the plot he'd hatched. Zulgha, usually the bolder and even terser of his employees, continued to fidget nervously as Sylvanas leaned against the mayor's desk in the exact position she'd remained in, motionless, for the duration of Bunsenburger's whole story. There was not tension in the room so much as a heavy air of mystery, which the good doctor was sure the Dark Lady had impressed upon their meeting intentionally.

Pausing out of respect, he waited for her to speak, the deep breaths typical before a serious discussion absent. "That's the whole story, beginning to end?" she asked, her tone of voice flat and unreadable.

There was no reason to mince words or play games; if Sylvanas really wanted to know the truth, she could invade his mind and take the information she wanted. Bunsenburger had no reason nor any method to hide the truth. "Exactly as I've told you; I imagine that Zanien should have been dead for at least an hour, by now."

Zulgha straightened her posture and pulled her head backward to hide her face behind her hair and the folds of her cloak's hood, unable to bear the suspense of their queen waiting so long to answer. The living...so impatient. Thankfully, Zulgha was an initiate and fully intended to continue life after undeath when the time came, but for now, Bunsenburger had to step on the young orc's nervously tapping foot to signal to her to calm down.

Finally, Sylvanas spoke again, still not looking up at him. "You're fully aware that you just confessed to orchestrating the death of one citizen of the Sindorei, and the turning of another into a minion?" she asked, though she was obviously asking him a lot more than that.

"Aware and thankful for the opportunity to inform you in person," Bunsenburger replied without an ounce of remorse. "Their people are, as I mentioned, members of the Horde about as tenuously as we are; possibly even less so, due to the general distaste other races have for blood elven supremacist sentiment. The loss of two replaceable, non-notable trainers is unlikely to cause any blowback."

Zulgha stiffened up like a coffin plank, obviously worried by the boldness of the doctor's statement. Even Bunsenburger himself felt the pressure at that moment, frozen in time as his entire endeavor hung on the Banshee Queen's reaction to a single answer he'd given. As always, her thoughts were her own, and it wasn't lost on Bunsenburger that the skeleton knights he'd raised as her bodyguards would readily arrest him on her command.

Stern but not cruel, she didn't leave him waiting for too long.

"Okay."

There were a few seconds where even Bunsenburger didn't quite understand what she meant. He was certain that Zulgha was ready to freak out at any moment, and even he found himself worried by the opaqueness of her reply.

Tempering his tone of voice, he tried to remain as deferent as possible in his demeanor. "Okay, meaning..."

Finally meeting his gaze, her usual seriousness was there, sans any sort of anger or disapproval. "Next time, just abduct more Alliance warlock trainers," she replied brusquely. And then, as promptly as she'd entered, she stood up from the desk and moved to leave after pointing toward the piece of furniture and silently instructing the skeletons to put it back in its place.

Bunsenburger blinked a few times and felt his still-functioning stomach turn over once in relief. Sylvanas didn't seem interested in even discussing the matter further, and once his more basic need of not being thrown in the Undercity dungeon was sated, he began to worry for his career.

"Am I to understand then, my queen, that I have your approval to continue?"

Pausing for a second by the stairs, Sylvanas looked back at him one last time. He knew from experience that she was not a leader given to excessive praise or to sentimentality, and that her seal of approval was not freely handed out. As if showing some sort of mercy to one of her subjects, the slightest hint of a smile pulled at one side of her mouth.

"I don't just approve...I expect you to continue, and to show results," she replied in a rather quiet voice. "Keep the matter within your circle...refine your technique for efficiency...and be able to demonstrate a method in the field, with a mobile lab, without the need for a stationary location, within one year."

Not waiting for him to respond with the sort of flattery and excessive praise one of her stature probably received too often, she pulled the hood back over her head and descended the staircase, her skeletons in tow. Bunsenburger's head was spinning like a living mortal, and he almost wished he'd brought more to drink.

Taking a seat in one of the chairs for guests at the mayoral office, he just leaned back for a moment and waited for his decrepit heart to slow down. His pulse had grown so slow in undeath, and to feel it race was unfamiliar and disorienting. Zulgha slumped down into a chair next to him, rubbing her face with her hands as if she'd been woken up too early from a nap.

"Does this mean we get more funding?" his assistant asked.

"She didn't say that," Bunsenburger cautioned her. "I assume that if we keep this to ourselves, then the only ones who will know are Martha and her former colleagues in Undercity, assuming we can find a way to keep Runa quiet...we'll likely need Martha's help in procurement of more test subjects."

"And for money? This will be expensive at least for the next year, and our skeleton soldiers are so successful on the battlefield that they have a low turnover rate; we can't finance this alone."

"All of that can be solved, in time...gold is not a particularly scarce resource on our planet." Wagging his finger in the air as he wrote on an imaginary notepad, Bunsenburger formulated a plan in his head. "I need to start writing letters, right away...going back to Outland is too expensive, especially now that we have other means of procurement."

Zulgha flashed her gums, an evil grin spreading across her face. "This month's Darkmoon Faire takes place in three days..." she said ominously.

Scratching his chin, Bunsenburger considered her implication for a moment. "We have to be careful...Ratchet is one thing, Darkmoon is another...by all means, check it out and see who you can find, hang out for a day or two, but leave Runa here; I'll find something else to busy her with."

"I have the green light?" she asked, her previous anxiety largely gone.

"Consider it a yellow light...round up helpers other than the skeletons as well; we don't want our operation's trademark to be seen on the same weekend that a hapless Alliance warlock might...disappear."

Already leaving on her own accord, Zulgha flashed him a thumbs up, hurrying down the stairs to prepare for the sort of quest he knew she preferred. Once the clacking sound of her flip flops disappeared downstairs, Bunsenburger remained sitting for a while. He'd eventually need to lock up and vacate the premises, since the office wasn't his and the 'favor' granted by the mayor had been coerced by a deathguard from Undercity in behalf of 'a very important person.' But for just a few moments, he could sit and savor the taste of victory.

"Yes...I hope there will be blood," he cackled to himself while imaging the sight he'd see upon returning to the maze in the back of his laboratory.

 **A/N: special thanks to Coincidenceless, who inspired this basic idea with his creative storytelling, but who had no idea I even wrote this until after it was finished. Hat's off to you, sir.**


End file.
